In our world today there are so many ways to lose hope because so many things are wrong—to name a few, there’s the pandemic, political polarization, racism, injustice, terrorism, and declining interest in Christian faith. But this hasn’t taken God by surprise. We are not in a new scenario—we’re in a “once again” scenario.

You see, this current climate reminds me of the time I travelled along with the Jews through their history by reading a chronological Bible. As I began to read the New Testament in early December that year, I experienced Christmas in a whole new way as I saw clearly how wrong everything was going for the Jews at the time of Jesus’ birth:

• The Jews were back in the Promised Land, but they were a conquered people.

• They had a Temple, but it was only a pale imitation of Solomon’s Temple.

• They had lots of new religious writings, but they hadn’t had a prophet from God in 400 years.

• They had a king, but he was not a Davidic king.

• They had no sign of a promised Messiah.

In short, it seemed that God had not kept His Covenant promises to them. It was as though they were once again in the same situation as their oppressed ancestors in Egypt, who groaned in slavery.

And then, amid the sorrows of life under Roman rule, Jesus was born. Surely His birth would change everything and give hope to the Jews that their salvation was at hand! But that wasn’t the case. Jesus’ birth and its circumstances remained hidden. 

Yes, the Magi came…but they protected Jesus by saying nothing. Mary and Joseph wisely kept Jesus’ identity to themselves too. And who would listen to Anna and Simeon who’d spent years waiting for the Messiah? Only the shepherds proclaimed the news widely, but how many believed their unlikely tale?

All this stifled communication led to the fact that Jesus’ birth meant absolutely nothing to society at the time because they didn’t even know about it.

And yet, God had already acted decisively to set in motion a plan that would change everything. 

Just because the masses didn’t know the Messiah had been born didn’t change the fact that He had been. It didn’t change the fact that God was at work behind the scenes building up to the most significant intervention in human history. By the time people started noticing, thirty years had passed!

All through those years when Israel felt abandoned by God, they were unaware that He knew about their sorrow and suffering, just as He had known about the plight of their ancestors in Egypt. 

And He once again kept His Covenant promises and was already at work on a plan. What peace they would have had if only they had known that the plan was unfolding and they simply had to wait thirty more years, such a brief moment of time in human history.

In our current world filled with so much wrong, we are once again in that type of situation. Maybe God is once again doing something new behind the scenes and we will see its effect in thirty years. Or maybe God already did something thirty years ago and its effect will be revealed soon, maybe even later today! There are so many possibilities! And, while God has not communicated His specific plans to us, we can be sure that our Father is never remote from us and He is not idle.

Christmas is a beautiful reminder that God remembers us. Just like at the time of Jesus’ birth, He knows our circumstances, feels what we are feeling, and cares for us more than we could ever imagine. We can be confident that He does have a plan in motion, whether we see evidence of it or not. 

Friends, this Christmas, let’s embrace the reassurance that our Father is in control and actively at work in our world, giving us hope, once again.

Merry Christmas to you from myself, the board, and the staff at CCCC!

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1. Attribute it to: Rev. John Pellowe, CEO, Canadian Centre for Christian Charities
2. Use the email icon on this page just to let me know that you are using it.

The post Hope for the Church: Christmas & God the Father appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Yet once the Spirit-led leader is hired, that person is placed within an organizational structure, otherwise known as an institution, which has policies, procedures, and plans that are supposed to be helpful. In fact, institution means an organization founded to help people do something together (rather than separately) for a religious, educational, professional, or social purpose. All churches and specialized ministries are institutions.

Institutions and Institutionalism

Now, I have to acknowledge that the word institution has a bad rap. As soon as it is said, one thinks of a stodgy old organization that is set in its ways and resistant to change. But that is not the way an institution has to be. Stodginess, being settled in one’s ways, and resistance to change don’t define institutions, but institutionalism.

Institutionalism arises when maintaining the organization itself becomes the primary object for a group within the organization. For them, the idea of what the organization is becomes what the organization was at a moment that is now frozen in time, and then bad things happen:

• Form takes precedence over substance
• The servant becomes the master
• The tail wags the dog
• The organization that once served the mission has displaced that mission

Institutions and organizations are good things. As Carl Dudley wrote, “Organization puts ideas on wheels, translates faith into action, and enables our vision or ministry to become tangible reality.”¹ There is no reason why an institution should necessarily inhibit charismatic ministry. And yet much conflict, particularly in local churches, occurs when Spirit-led ministry runs up against entrenched institutionalism. When the institution takes precedence over its mission, institutionalism has inhibited the charismatic work of the Holy Spirit.

The problem from a leadership perspective is that, once a Spirit-led leader is hired, the stage is set for conflict with the powerful force of institutionalism. The Spirit-led leader could find resistance coming from any or all of the board, the staff, or the donors. Any of these persons could be predisposed to revel in the fresh work of the Spirit today (charismatic ministry), or to trust in the time-tested ways of the ministry’s institutional life (institutionalism).

The Solution

The solution is to recognize that people suffering from institutionalism have lost sight of how God works and what the purpose of the organization truly is. My own observation is that those people have displaced Christ at the centre of the ministry with their own personal preferences for the ministry. In other words, the ministry is now serving them as opposed to the mission. They may still be actively engaged in mission, may be significant donors and volunteers, but only in so far as how the mission is conducted suits their own preferences.

We all need to acknowledge that Christ and his mission for our ministry come first, and our personal preferences come much lower in priority. The welfare of the community within the organization ranks in-between.

The board and leadership need to help people understand this. Discipleship programs should include teaching about the place of individual preferences in the life of the church. When everyone keeps Christ at the centre, we will all get along. We’ll not be self-centred and will be much more charitable towards others. We will be more willing to follow the Holy Spirit wherever he leads us.

The Spirit’s Leadership

The primary correction for institutionalism, a fixation on the past, is to focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church today. So here are some thoughts to help you teach your community about the role of the Spirit and, consequently, to be more receptive to Spirit-led leadership.

The Holy Spirit Continues Jesus’ Ministry

Luke says his gospel concerns only what Jesus “began to do and teach,”² and yet his gospel and its sequel, Acts, show that Jesus’ time on earth came to an end shortly after the close of the gospel when he ascended into heaven. So how does Jesus continue to do and teach?  Luke makes it clear that Jesus continues to work through the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit Helps Us Adapt

According to the lexicons, the Hebrew and Greek words for the Holy Spirit mean “invisibility, movement, power, and life” and convey the idea of “God in action.” We live in an ever-changing world, so when we know that the creative and dynamic Spirit of God is actively guiding the church to meet new challenges, we should expect change and development to be the result. While the church’s mission does not change and the gospel of Jesus Christ does not change, how the church conducts its mission certainly can and does change.

The changes brought about by the Holy Spirit help the church address current conditions and are not changes that we humans can control. All we can do is acknowledge that the church and its various ministries belong to God and are his to do with as he pleases. The Holy Spirit therefore has primacy over the church, its methods and its structures, and we must accept his leadership.

The Spirit Prevents Decay

As often happens as organizations age, we get attached to the structure and the methods already in use and then, as it has been so eloquently said, the “encrustations of time . . . come to be valued as the most distinctive feature of the organization.”³ The organization fossilizes and declines.

We must keep our focus on God and remember that the church exists for a reason. It’s been well said that, “There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.”⁴ Mission comes before organization, therefore organizations (institutions) can be adapted to support the mission.

The Trinity and Institutions

A Trinitarian view of the church helps us see the continuing work of Christ through the Spirit to accomplish the Father’s purposes, giving the church a dynamic quality that prevents fossilization.

Where the Spirit is at work, things happen. The people of God should be solidly grounded in the historical, incarnational ministry of Christ, but also open to the continuing, fresh, dynamic work of the Spirit.

Surprise!

There will always be an element of surprise as we discern where the Spirit is and how he is leading us. We must be careful to not make the Spirit fit our preconceived notions of how things should be!

Spirit-led leaders and the institutions they lead will always be highly compatible when everyone is focused on Christ and his mission and sees the organization simply as a helpful means to fulfill Christ’s mission.

Key Thought: A Spirit-led ministry uses its institutional structure to accomplish its mission.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
John 10:1-4 (NASB)

Christ’s Call to Ministry

I love hearing ministry leaders tell their stories about how Christ called them into vocational ministry.

Every story is unique. No two are alike.

Every story is very personal.

And no one ever forgets their call story.

They treasure it!

Christ the Great Shepherd

The Initial Call to Ministry

When Jesus Christ enters the sheep pen, he knows all his sheep individually. He even knows them by name. And they know his voice. You’ve probably had the same experience I’ve had. You hear someone talking but can’t see them, and yet by their voice you know exactly who they are. As I read these verses, I can’t help but imagine that when the shepherd speaks, the sheep’s’ ears perk up, they turn their heads toward the voice, and they listen intently. And when the shepherd calls them out of the pen, they follow.

As Christian ministry leaders, Jesus called each one of us from the pen to go out through the gate and enter into vocational ministry.

Many of us were probably quite attentive to his voice at that time because many transitions come when we are in crisis or upset, and are looking for direction:

• It may be that we are unsettled in what we are currently doing, restless and needing a change.
• Perhaps we’re finishing up a seminary degree and anxious to find a place to serve.
• Maybe our world has turned upside-down and we are in crisis. Everything is changing and we need to find a way forward.
• Or it could just be an opportunity comes your way, and you wonder what to do about it.

In all these scenarios, we end up searching for what God wants of us. And thus we are particularly attentive to his voice at the time when we first come into ministry leadership. And we probably stay attentive for at least a while, earnestly seeking to discern what God wants us to do.

The Continuing Call While in Ministry

But as we mature in our leadership roles, we may find ourselves growing in confidence of our own abilities, and we may lose the sense of dependence on God, and gradually his voice grows dim as we focus on doing our very best for God based on our own self-reliance.

Yet once the sheep have left the pen following behind the shepherd, the shepherd doesn’t stop talking with his sheep. The shepherd walks ahead of them, still talking with them, and they continue to follow wherever the shepherd leads.

However far you have come in ministry since your initial call, Jesus is still going ahead of you and keeps calling you to follow him. We must continue to listen to his voice just as intently, just as closely, as we did when he first called us to ministry, because he knows the good works that he has in store for us to do, and he doesn’t leave us to guess what they are. If you continue to listen to our Great Shepherd’s voice just as earnestly as you did at the beginning of your ministry, you will be led to all that he has in store for you. And having heard Christ’s continuing call, respond to it just as eagerly as you did his initial call.

Blessing

Now [may] the God of peace,… the great Shepherd of the sheep … Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13:20

Key Thought: The Good Shepherd’s call to ministry becomes his guidance in ministry.

The post The Shepherd’s Voice appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Everyone was amazed by the many miracles and wonders that the apostles worked. All the Lord’s followers often met together, and they shared everything they had. They would sell their property and possessions and give the money to whoever needed it. Day after day they met together in the temple. They broke bread together in different homes and shared their food happily and freely, while praising God. Everyone liked them, and each day the Lord added to their group others who were being saved.
Acts 2:46-47 (CEV)

“Everyone liked them!” Or, as other translations put it, “They enjoyed the favour of all the people.” Considering that only a short while before this time, the crowds were calling for Jesus’ crucifixion and the apostles were in hiding for their lives, the turnaround in public opinion is amazing. While not everyone accepted their beliefs about Jesus Christ, they did respect his followers, the first Christians.

What strikes me as a message for the church today is that the ancient church was able to preach the truth without compromise and yet win the favour of the people by how they lived. If we could but do the same today!

The Obstacle: They Made No Compromise

You would think that the key to popularity would be to preach a nice, agreeable, non-offensive message supported by good deeds that people would appreciate. But this is not what the ancient Christians did. They performed good deeds, but their message was anything but nice, agreeable, and non-offensive! It seems very strange that the public held Christ’s followers in high esteem in spite of some pretty blunt preaching. Peter certainly didn’t pull any punches in his sermons, saying,

Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know….And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross….Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.¹

The ancient church did not compromise or sugarcoat its message to win people to Christ. In those days, death on a cross was clear evidence that Jesus was not the Messiah, because everyone in that society knew that the Messiah would not die but would be victorious over Israel’s enemies. And no true Messiah would surrender to an execution so horrible that it was reserved only for slaves and outcasts. There couldn’t have been a bigger obstacle to public acceptance than the cross!

But the ancient Christians didn’t avoid talking about the cross, the very thing that the public believed most powerfully argued against the Christian faith. The church countered that argument against Jesus’ messiahship with their own much more powerful argument based on his physical resurrection and the hundreds of people who had seen the risen Christ. Their preaching didn’t cater to the audience but seriously disturbed them to the point that “they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

We need to speak to our audience in a way they can understand, but we shouldn’t downplay aspects of our faith which we think they might find troublesome.

For example, in today’s culture:

• The idea that there is only one way to God and it runs exclusively through Jesus Christ is offensive to most. They want to find their own way to God.
• The idea that there is a personal god is rejected by many, because that brings accountability into the picture. They’d rather have an impersonal force or principle that they can manipulate to their liking.
• The idea that there are moral absolutes offends many people today who believe there are no absolutes, everything is relative. Moral relativism allows them to justify their own morality. We need to remember that we don’t have a better way to offer, we have the only way to offer.

A fellow elder at my church heard a pastor leading people in a sinner’s prayer at a seeker-sensitive evangelical church. The prayer completely avoided mention of sin and the cross and effectively made Jesus not much more than an inspirational person we aspire to be like. If people make a decision for Christ under those pretenses, they may later feel they were the victims of a bait and switch when they find out the whole truth of Christian faith.

Like the ancient church, the church today needs to speak truth, not avoid it. There are wise and unwise ways to preach the Gospel today, but the whole truth needs to be preached.

So, be unabashedly evangelical in proclaiming the Gospel!

A Powerful Attraction: They Practised What They Preached

As a community, they lived such attractive lives that they enjoyed the people’s favour. They preached love for one another and they demonstrated it. They preached a new way of living with justice for all, and they lived it.

At that time, they expected Christ’s return in the very near future, so they weren’t thinking long term. This led at least some of them to liquidate assets to care for each other, something that is not sustainable over the long term. (Or maybe that’s a sign of our lack of faith that our Father will provide us ‘our daily bread’ as we need it.) Nevertheless, Christians as a group are still the most generous people, who are ready to share their resources to help others, often non-Christians, who are in need.

As part of their spiritual growth as a disciple of Christ, Christians today should ask themselves how they could demonstrate more of their faith in their lives. What have we received from God that we haven’t personally given as fully as we could to others?

• His unconditional love?
• His provision?
• His integrity?
• His willingness to sacrifice for others?
• His constancy?
• His kindness?

What could you do to demonstrate God’s traits in your life so that others could see them at work in and through you? What could your ministry do? If we believe something about God, then we should find a way to act on that belief and pass the fruit of the belief on to others.

So, let’s make our church congregations a true community seven days a week through individual acts of love both within and without the community.

An Impressive Result: They Walked in God’s Power

Miracles and wonders accompanied the apostles as they did their work because God’s power flowed through them. The results were impressive, as the book of Acts records. Their secret was that they believed Christ would be active in their world through the Holy Spirit, and they expected to see things happen. So they did! They were bold and confident as they went about their daily business, sharing the Gospel and doing good to others.

Are we as bold and confident today? We will develop boldness and confidence when we have our own personal, life-transforming, meetings with Christ. When we know what God has done in our own lives, we will have faith and boldness to tell people what he can do in theirs. This is why we should be doing everything we can so that every Christ-follower is alive to the spiritual, theological, and missional components of Christian life. When they are plugged in to God spiritually and understand who he is and what he is about in this world, they can then express their faith in word and deed to the world around them.

So, be open to and expect the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in and through you each and every day.

Conclusion

Let’s take our faith to heart and make it real in every aspect of our life and being, so that others will be drawn to the beautiful difference that Christ makes in each person.

Key Thought: The church needs to fully live up to Christ’s intent for it and walk as his disciples walked – in love and in power and in community.

The post And Everyone Liked Them… appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

From the previous post, we know that anyone wanting to influence culture must be partly outside the mainstream of that culture. That is, they must be counter-cultural in some way in order to have something new to contribute.

So if the church wants to influence culture, it must maintain its own cultural distinctiveness in thought and deed. Fortunately, Christians have three aids to help us do this: our theology, the Holy Spirit, and the church itself.

Theology: A Strong Foundation

Christian theology gives us a very distinctive understanding of the world and how it works. For example, our theology of the human person gives us a very high view of human life, seeing humanity as the pinnacle of God’s creation. We have a lot to say to society about life itself and our relationships with each other because we believe:

• Male and female, we are created in God’s image
• We were made a little lower than God, and crowned with glory and majesty
• We all stand as equals before God. Even our political rulers stand equally with us under God.
• Life is a gift from God, who knows people even before they are born (eg., Psa 139:13-16, Isa 49:1, Gal 1:15)
• The termination of a life is abhorrent to God

If we don’t know what we believe, we will inevitably lose our distinctiveness and become just like our culture, such as by adopting secular attitudes about power and status. This is why Christians need theological vitality. It gives us a strong foundation.

The Holy Spirit: Our Creative Guide

Having a strong theological foundation is great, but then the question becomes “What do we do with our theology?” Fortunately, Christians are not left to our own devices to figure out how to apply our theology to present day circumstances. We have the Holy Spirit as our guide.The Holy Spirit is the reason why our Bible is not just an historical record, but is a living book that speaks freshly to us today.

When we reflect on our theology and our culture, it is vital that we do so through the correct lens. If we think about theology from within existing culture, we could read it the way we want to read it. But the Holy Spirit helps us do our theological reflection from God’s perspective, and then decide what action to take. If society is moving towards God’s eschatological future, then we support it. If it isn’t, then we critique it and offer a better way.

In the case of how society thinks about human life, the Greco-Roman culture in the first century was quite at odds with the Christian perspective. In distinction to the high view of life taken by Christians, the non-Christian culture had a very low view of human life; it was cheap and expendable.

The perception of all human beings as equal, and equally valuable, as persons worthy of respect and equal treatment before the law, is a relatively rare and recent achievement in human history. The concept that women, children, racial minorities, immigrants, refugees and the poor are to be treated not only equally but with special concern because of their frequent marginalization and vulnerability is a central biblical teaching rarely actualized in public life.

Glen Stassen & David Gushee in Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context

Here are a couple of examples of what the early Christians challenged in their society based on their theology of the human person and how the Spirit led them to assess their culture.

Infanticide

Infanticide was common in Rome and Greece (and also in China, Japan, Brazil, Africa, and among the Inuit).¹ It was so common in ancient Greece that it was blamed for its population decline. Children were left exposed outside or thrown into rivers and left to die, and no one had a moral problem with it.

Christians alone stood firmly against the killing of babies because it was murder, because Jesus gave them importance by saying they should not be hindered in coming to him, and because children are seen as a blessing throughout Scripture.

Subjugation of Women

Greek and Roman women had essentially no rights and no freedom. Plutarch wrote that Greek men keep their wives “under lock and key.” The average Athenian woman had the social status of a slave. Greek girls were not educated and throughout her entire life, a female was not allowed to speak in public at all. Neither were Roman women. When some Roman women entered the Forum (which they were not allowed to enter) to protest and ask for a law to be repealed (breaking convention by speaking in public), Cato asked, “Could you not have asked your own husbands the same thing at home?”²

A Roman girl grew up under patria potestas, a law that gave the man who led a household complete control over all members of his household (including the power of life and death). A woman could not own property, receive any inheritance, or have any freedom until the male head of her household died.

A Christian who is not spiritually sensitive may not be able to discern the Spirit’s leading in how to assess society against Christian theology. This is why I’ve also said that all Christians must have spiritual vitality. If we can’t sense the Spirit’s leading, we’re basically on our own to decide what we think is the appropriate interpretation and application of theology.

The Church: A Community in Action

When Christians understand their theology and discern what the Spirit has to say about culture in light of that theology, it is time to take action. In terms of infanticide and the place of women in society, there was nothing to affirm, so the church had to take action to move society closer to God’s ideal. Here’s what they did.

Child Abandonment

In the ancient writings of the church, infanticide was soundly condemned. Within fifty years or so of becoming a legal religion, Christians were able to persuade the Roman emperor to outlaw infanticide. Until that time, children who were not directly killed by their parents were usually exposed or thrown into a river, and Christians rescued them and adopted them as their own.

Subjugation of Women

To improve the lot of women, the church modeled what their role in society should be. The resulting effect of the church on the status of women was revolutionary. The church gave women the only opportunity they had to hold leadership roles and be socially active outside the family home. Female leaders in the church are frequently mentioned in the New Testament, including among them Col 4:15, 1 Cor 16:19, and Rom 16:1-3.

Women were evangelists and missionaries, and they were a significant factor in the early church’s spiritual and numerical growth. An early church father, Chrysostom, writing in the late 300s, wrote “The women of those days were more spirited than men.” Historian W.E.H. Lecky wrote “In the ages of persecution female figures occupy many of the foremost places and ranks of martyrdom.” Another historian wrote “Christendom dare not forget that it was primarily the female sex that for the greater part brought about its rapid growth. It was the evangelistic zeal of women in the early years of the church, and later, which won the weak and the mighty.”³

Christianity was responsible for the repeal of the patria potestas law in 374. Women no longer needed their father’s permission to marry (and whom to marry), they held substantially the same property rights as their husbands, and the veil was done away with. This is why women flocked to the ancient church. It was liberating!

Challenge

The early church is a great example for us today. It knew its theology, discerned the Spirit’s leadership, and then put their ideas into action to demonstrate Christian values at work for the good of the marginalized, the oppressed, and in fact for all members of their society.

Given the many issues which challenge our society today, which ones are you most passionate about? Which ones relate closest to your ministry’s mission? What part might you or your ministry play in helping our society move a little closer to God’s ideal?

Key Thought: An authentic Christian faith leads to social improvement ideas.

The post The Church as a Change Agent appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

A Warning

In a nutshell, Miller (a 30-year Southern Baptist pastor and a theology professor) claims that the Western church has adapted so much to culture that it has been sapped of its vitality and influence. We’ve lost the mystery and the power of our faith. It’s hard, he writes, to distinguish between church and culture.

Some of the specific underlying causes of the problem are:

• Our desire to be big
• Our tendency to have a program for everything
• Our willingness to trade intimacy for anonymity

Miller doesn’t hold out much hope for denominations and local churches as they currently are. In this, I think he is overly pessimistic.

A Solution

However, in spite of his pessimism, he does call for a renewed vital faith at the personal level, which he believes will ultimately hit the ‘reset’ button on the church and birth something new, replacing existing churches.

My one disagreement with Miller is that I don’t believe God would write off existing churches. If pastors and congregations are off-mission, causing all the problems that Miller documents, the Holy Spirit can change anyone who is willing to be changed. He can birth new vision, new priorities, new understanding, new commitment, new passion, that will revitalize our churches.

Miller’s call for a renewed personal, vital faith is what I found really exciting and motivating! A vital faith is a living faith. And when people of no faith see people with a living faith that is working powerfully in their lives, they will want to investigate it because it is very attractive. People with vibrant faith are the best evangelists you could wish for.

There are two building blocks for a vital faith that will help Christians maintain the distinctive difference between church and culture, and that will give them the ability to discern God’s direction in their lives. They are:

1. Theological vitality, and
2. Spiritual vitality

Christians who are mature in these two areas will stand out in sharp relief from our culture and they will be the core of healthy, flourishing churches.

Part of the reason I found vitality exciting is because my own denomination (PAOC) rolled out a 2020 Initiative a couple of years ago, and it is based on three vitalities: Theological, Spiritual, and Missional. It’s always nice to see confirmation of something birthed through discernment. Some of the examples I give below come from the reflection given to these two vitalities by the PAOC.

Theological Vitality

A good question to ask is “Where is my congregation theologically?”

Theology is the bedrock we stand on.You want to be sure your congregation is growing in their knowledge of Christian beliefs. This comes across as rather trite, but it is true nevertheless and it warrants our focused attention. Helping people grow in theological understanding is not just another worthy goal. It is central to equipping the saints for the work of service.

When I pastored a small church, I realized that the theological depth of the congregation was not actually that deep. So preaching on theological topics became one of the core themes of my time there with the content very deliberately planned a year at a time to give them a full-orbed understanding of God.

But there’s much more to theological vitality than just knowledge. People who have theological vitality:

• know how to engage Scripture in a way that informs their daily life. The don’t just give intellectual assent to the Bible, they live by it. They read the Bible as a historical document detailing God’s self-revelation to us, but they read it as more than that. They also read it as a living document through which the Holy Spirit speaks to us now.
• understand the big picture of who God is and how we fit into his plans. They know that their purpose as a Christian demands an outward focus.
• know God and his ways well enough that they do not fall for whatever some author or speaker says. They can test it.
• are well-rounded in their life, majoring on the majors of our faith. They don’t obsess over minor topics of interest.
• are able to pass on the faith to others so that they too are theologically vital.

Vanishing evangelicals are like chameleons because their lives look pretty much like anybody else’s life and they just blend in with the crowd. When people understand who God is, the claim he has on their lives, and how he wants to work through them, “Sunday Christians” become “Sunday-to-Sunday Christians.” No one who knows them would ever be surprised to discover they are a Christian because they see evidence of their faith at work every day in them. They live their faith, they don’t just talk about it. Their attitudes, behaviours, goals, everything about them, line up with their faith. Our faith is meaningless if our lives don’t model authentic Christlikeness.

Pastors have the great privilege and opportunity to design a church that intentionally develops every member into a theologically literate Christian. Sermons, Sunday School classes, and small groups can all study the major doctrines and key theological ideas of our faith along with how to apply them. There are lots of study materials and curricula with titles like Foundations of the Faith that you could use. Make theological development a major focus of your church.

Spiritual Vitality

When I went to Tyndale Seminary in 2001, I thought I was already a mature Christian. After all, wasn’t that why God was calling me to prepare for full-time ministry? How naive! Did I ever learn a thing or two in the fall of 2001 when I took a course called Foundations of Christian Spirituality!!

I thought until then that the way to discern God’s direction was to think wisely, think biblically, and then make godly plans and pray for his blessing. That course taught me that there are spiritual practices that can help me discern God’s specific direction to me, and to discern it at the start of the process (ie., I’m not asking God to bless my plans!). It changed my life. I’ve blogged about some of these practices in my series Hearing God Speak.

Since I took that course, these traditional spiritual practices have become much more mainstream among evangelicals. What the practices have done for me is make my experience of God direct and personal. I have evidence in my own life of his reality and it does not depend on any faith-buttressing support from government, culture, or even my church. Those experiences are the only reason I have the job I have today. They have given me guidance and led to new initiatives at CCCC. My spiritual experiences reinforce my trust in God and give me a solid basis for my assurance that God is very real and very interested in me as a person.

How rich are the spiritual experiences of people in your church? Ask yourself, “Where is my congregation in terms of their spiritual practices?“

People with spiritual vitality:

• know intimacy with God through prayer and engagement with his Word.
• are actively engaged in Spirit-empowered, Christ-honouring living.
• demonstrate the adventure of living “naturally supernatural.”
• mentor others in a Spirit-filled life.

You can preach about how to discern God (and should), but ultimately you will need to give your congregation the experience of doing the spiritual practices. Have a series of classes in which you teach Lectio Divina, experience an extended time of silence, practice journaling, and so on.

Some resources that might help you prepare sermons or classes are:

• Space for God: The Study and Practice of Spirituality and Prayer
  by Don Postema
• Prayer
  by Richard Foster
• Streams of Living Water: Essential Practices from the Six Great Traditions of Christian Faith
  by Richard Foster
• Protestant Spiritual Traditions:
  by Frank Senn
• Christian Spirituality: An Introduction
  by Alister McGrath

These books are ones I personally own and can vouch for, but I notice that some of them are now quite expensive. I suggest for the expensive ones that you see who the authors are and see if they’ve written anything newer. You can also look up the topics and search for books that are more reasonably priced.

When I pastored that small church, I figured it was my job to bring the people to God in order to experience his presence, and especially to help them discern his leadership. One of the most interesting things we did was explore different forms of worship services from different Protestant traditions, drawing on their respective resources (hymns, prayers etc) to hold a complete service. It was wonderful to see people finding new ways of experiencing God.

The congregation was small enough and trusting enough that they allowed me to do that. At the time, I couldn’t imagine doing this level of experimentation in a bigger church! But with the right preparation and teaching, who knows?

If you can help your congregation enrich their spirituality so they experience God afresh, you won’t have to stir them up to do good works, God will do that for you! Your part as their pastor is to train them (just as you were probably trained in seminary) in the spiritual disciplines and practices that will help them ‘hear’ God.

Teach your congregation how to have a direct experience of God and then watch and be amazed.

Vital Christians

More than ever, Christians need to know the theology of their faith and have rich spiritual lives as they directly experience God. People living like that will never be mistaken for anyone but a Christ-follower. Unlike a chameleon, your congregation will stand out from its surroundings!

Key Thought: Congregations should exemplify the key distinctives of Christian spirituality and life.

“The book, The Vanishing Evangelical, has been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller.”

The post Pastors! Where Is Your Congregation? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The third threat to our corporate witness is self-centredness. This is closely related individualism, but whereas individualism is about maximizing one’s personal rights, self-centredness is about attitude, specifically that “It’s all about me!” No one would ever admit to holding this attitude of course, but when people think:

• “I am irreplaceable and this place would fall apart without me,” or
• “The credit for that should have come to me,” or
• “I need to be in control of this,”

they are making it perfectly clear that, yes, it is all about them.

The main problem with self-centredness, from an organizational perspective, is that self-centred employees feel ownership of some aspect of the ministry. The employee who refuses to share knowledge, refuses to cross-train someone in their job, or who improperly acts like they have a veto, becomes a stumbling block to organizational faithfulness to Christ. How can an organization be faithful to Christ when an employee claims a trump card of ownership over some part of the organization?

Negative Consequences

When an employee thinks it’s all about them, they have a pretty tight grip on their part of the ministry that can cause problems:

• They suffer anxiety as they live in fear of losing control, which means losing their security. They fight desperately to hold on to what they have and become very controlling and manipulative, both harmful to team dynamics and a poor witness to Christ.
• They become prideful as they think of the ministry and its accomplishments as theirs. They puff themselves up and take credit all to themselves that should properly go to the team and to God, and, yes, some even to them too.
• They bear too much of a burden for the ministry and can easily burn themselves out. When they think everything depends on them, they have no one else to turn to because, after all, its their job to have all the answers!
• They engage in political behaviour, office politics, that encourages gossip and innuendo. They plant seeds of doubt about other staff, in order to protect themselves. They jockey for position, creating a competitive spirit on the team. They suck the joy out of the workplace. I remember one office I worked in that was intimidated by the behaviour of one particularly strong and opinionated individual, and the first day after the person left was the first day I ever heard laughter in that office! Sometimes you don’t realize what a chilling effect one person can have until they are gone!
• Perhaps worst of all, they stifle everyone else and shut down creativity, because they forcefully champion their own ideas.  Not much group discernment happens on a team of self-centred people! 

The Truth

The truth that overcomes self-centredness is that we belong to Christ, and so do our ministries. They are not ours! That means we are stewards working for an owner.

Jesus Christ is the greatest owner possible and, with his unlimited resources, he takes responsibility for his possessions.

Being a steward, you do not bear final responsibility for the ministry you lead. It is not all up to you! This liberating thought frees you to offer Christ

• your very best work,
• your highest commitment,
• every ounce of your strength,

and then allows you to stop struggling and rest, knowing that even with all that you have to offer, Jesus still has even more to offer back to you to help the ministry out. You have the most stupendous partner in ministry you could ever hope for!

Back in the 90s I was a deacon at my church. About ten years before, a pastoral moral failure devastated the leadership. I was just a young man in the congregation when that happened, but now that I was on the board with some of the deacons from that time, I saw the deep suspicion of all things pastoral that they still had. Each year, the board elections left the board divided 5-4 one way or the other between those who were suspicious of pastors and those who weren’t. The church was stymied into an impasse at the board level. It was an awful time for me as I anguished over this state of affairs.

One night at a prayer service I felt particularly burdened by the problem,

and then suddenly…

“And then suddenly…” I love that phrase when it relates to God showing up in our lives!!!!

…I spoke out words that I believe Jesus gave me to speak to myself on his behalf:

“This is NOT your church, this is MY church. I will look after MY church.”

What a release that was. Of course! This is Christ’s church, not mine. He is responsible for it and, as his possession, he will take care of it. I shouldn’t usurp Christ’s responsibilities! Let him look after his possession. Trust him to look after his possession. I just had to do my part as a deacon.

That is the beauty of this truth that we belong to Christ. If you and I care for the treasures we display on our mantels, how much more Jesus cares for your ministry, which after all is not your ministry but his!

Benefits of Being a Steward

Being a steward and not an owner has several benefits:

• As a steward, I can go to the Owner with a problem and get some help. There are resources beyond me that can be brought to bear on the ministry.
• I can focus on mission accomplishment instead of satisfying my own needs.
• I can let go of my grip on the ministry because someone else is already holding on to it.
• I can relax a bit and enjoy my work a whole lot more!

When a whole team thinks like stewards, you have the making of a great work environment because everyone has the primary role of serving.

 Building a Sense of Stewardship

As a leader, you should do everything you can to promote the idea that all employees are stewards.

•  Try to eliminate ‘my’ from your vocabulary with respect to the ministry you lead. I have a terrible time with this, but it is not my ministry, my board, or my staff. When I say it, I don’t mean it from an ownership perspective, just that I’m referring to the particular ministry, board, and staff that I’m associated with. However, now that I’m thinking about it I’ll do my best to refer to CCCC, the CCCC board, and the CCCC staff.
• Even if you founded the ministry you work for, recognize that you are not its owner. And if, like me, you were hired to lead an existing ministry, it was not given to you. In both cases we only have custody of ‘our’ ministries for a period of time to steward on behalf of their real Owner, and then we give them over to someone else who will do the same. So think about creating a succession plan to replace yourself. This shouldn’t be threatening to you. After all, if you are not the senior leader, you can’t be promoted if you don’t have a plan to replace yourself. If you are the senior leader, you don’t normally choose your successor (the board will do that) but you should always have at least have one credible candidate for interim leader. Thinking about replacing yourself helps you lessen your sense of ownership of the ministry. My post, Emergency Succession Planning, may help you think this through.
• Demonstrate that you, as the senior leader, are under higher authority.
  • Ask the board to give you a formal annual performance review. (It is surprising how many senior leaders do not get a performance review.)
  • Ask them to challenge you and ask probing questions. Put yourself under their scrutiny.
• If your board is stacked with your hand-picked favourite people, stop doing that. You really need an independent board, so let the board recruit directors. They should consult with the senior leader to ensure they are not recruiting people who would be damaging to the ministry (on the premise that the senior leader knows church members, donors, people in the community, better than the directors do).
• Finally, get serious about group discernment. How do you know what the Owner wants you to do unless you consult with him. When team members take part in discerning God’s will together, there will be a very strong sense of stewardship.

Please feel free to contribute any ideas you have for building within a ministry team the sense of belonging to Christ.

The post Ministries as Christ’s Possessions appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The second threat to our corporate witness is careerism, in which career advancement is a person’s chief aim in life. Making the most of your gifts and talents for service to God is good stewardship, but it becomes a problem when people are consumed with personal advancement. The more that ministry staff obsess over advancing themselves, the less authentic our corporate witness will be, because God often wants us to do something for someone else’s benefit, not ours. In fact, he wants us to love sacrificially and unconditionally, and this may impact our careers.

Have you ever felt a sales person had no interest in your welfare, just their commission? You can tell when they genuinely want to help you and when they see dollar signs instead of you.

“Oh, that looks so beautiful on you!”

“You deserve the best!”

If that degree of self-interest comes out in a ministry employee, it disheartens everyone else who wants and expects ministry staff to be passionate about their mission more than themselves.

I talked with a church secretary a few weeks ago and she couldn’t stop singing the praises for her church, her board, and her pastor. She was so exuberantly enthusiastic as she told me how she just loves coming to work as a church secretary because it is so fulfilling to be doing important work every day for God. I loved her passion for her job and her commitment to it. Does she make her church attractive to me? You bet! And if I didn’t already know Christ and she told me about him, I would pay serious attention because of her passion.

In fact, if you feel the same way about your ministry workplace as this secretary does about hers, please make a comment as an encouragement to others.

Ministries don’t have careers, but they do have a corporate existence that they’d like to maximize and sustain into the future. This makes it possible that ministries could behave in similar ways as careerist individuals, and have similar negative effects on their own corporate witness and on the welfare of the community of Christian ministries.

Negatives of Careerism

When most employees are working for a cause, careerist employees can have some negative effects on the ministry and its team:

• They tend to focus on themselves rather than on mission, which for them is a means to an end, not something they are passionately engaged in as an end worthy in itself. Their dampened enthusiasm for the mission could be a drag on everyone else’s motivation.
• Their loyalty is to themselves, so their employment relationship is transactional. They are invested in the ministry they work for only to the extent that it helps their career.
• A person who is in it for themselves can’t help but give out signals to teammates that they are not all in it together. Team spirit will suffer when someone is more concerned with their own welfare rather than the team’s welfare. They are unlikely to sacrifice for the benefit of the team.

The Truth

This threat can be overcome with the truth that your ministry is called by Christ to do something great for him. And that means we have a high calling worthy of our greatest aspirations! Replace careerism with response to a call. It makes a big difference whether you focus on what you do as a means of furthering your career or as a means of accomplishing a mission you passionately believe in.

At CCCC, for example, we are not called to provide information and services, we are called to equip Christian ministries as organizations so they can do what God has called them to do. We do that by providing information and services, but we are working for something much more important — the accomplishment of our members’ missions. Your mission! The church’s mission! I want people working at CCCC who are jazzed by that! I want people who are passionate about the mission, who are sold out on making it happen! I know you want the same for your ministry too.

Whether someone feels called to vocational ministry or to secular work, when they know they are serving God in the place he wants them to be, they don’t have a career, they have a calling. And that makes all the difference because, as Paul says, we are working for the One who called us, Jesus Christ.

All Christians share a general call to serve Christ. In the absence of a personal call to a specific ministry or task, they have the freedom to discern for themselves where and how to fulfill their general call. What’s important is that they know they are fulfilling God’s call to service in what they are doing. They are pursuing God first and career second. They engage with mission because it is how they serve God.

Some Christians also have a strong personal call. This is my experience. As I wrote in Discerning Your Call, I knew from my preteen years that someday God wanted me to serve the church, something I didn’t know how to do, so I did not pursue it.

But on May 25th 2001, I asked God a question while driving home from an early morning prayer meeting, “Why have you given me so much vision for my church, for my clients, for everyone around me and nothing for me?” The answer was so clear that I pulled over to the side of the road in shock. I knew instantly that God had given me a call and that the call was still valid this many years later! I didn’t know what ministry God wanted me to do, but I did know I’d have to prepare for it, so I went home and told my wife I was going to go to seminary. She instantly agreed without reservation (now that’s confirmation!).

My personal call is to serve the church, and CCCC lets me do that. Does that affect how I see my job? Absolutely it does!

Benefits

The benefits of having a sense of call, whether a general call or a particular call, are significant.

• We will have great passion for our work because it is more than a job, it is a calling. My self-identity includes my call, so my job is part of my self-identity.
• Our work has great meaning and is very fulfilling because it is a call.
• Our sense of team will be heightened as we work with people who have an equal call to the ministry and together we become part of something bigger than ourselves, a ministry serving God’s mission.
• We will work with excellence because that is what our high calling demands of us.

Special Warning to Employers

It is all too easy to abuse someone’s sense of call. We can pay too little because we know they believe God wants them doing this, and after all, aren’t we as Christians called to a sacrificial lifestyle? Not quite! As an employer, you are caring for God’s sheep and you will be held to account for the level of care you gave. Pay the worker the wages that are due. Be fair. Christian workplaces should be the best workplaces. You are a workplace, not a workhouse!

I don’t want someone working at CCCC because they can make more money here than anywhere else. I want them here because they believe in our mission. But I do want to be able to stand before God and the public and say that we paid fair wages to everyone. Not too low, and not too high.

So don’t abuse your staff’s sense of call.

Building a Shared Call

Here’s what you can do to prevent careerism from hampering your ministry:

• When interviewing people, ask:
  • Why do you want to work with us?
  • What has God been doing in your life in the last three months?
  • How does this particular job fit with your career aspirations?
• Constantly talk with staff about how the work you do ties into the church’s mission
  • Keep the vision in sight, not the activity. For example, you might
    • Provide meals (activity) to relieve hunger (immediate outcome) so that everyone experiences God’s provision (long term outcome) and ultimately is able to be the whole person God made them to be (vision).
    • Provide church services (activity) so people can praise God and learn from the Word (immediate outcomes) so that they become mature believers (long term outcome) and become the image of Christ (vision).
• Bring theological discernment into your decision process, and encourage theological reflection at leadership and staff meetings.
• Encourage people to talk about how they feel about what they do. What makes them feel significant? Fulfilled? In a mission-driven organization, this should bring out stories that are a springboard to talk about God’s call on the organization.
• Talk with staff about how God is leading them now. God may be laying something on their heart that relates to your corporate call.
• For an organization, you could think of your vision, End statement, or Social Value Proposition, as a call. What is the end good you are working to achieve? Keep that in mind as your call and it will lift you up to the greater purpose you are serving.

The post Organizational Calling appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Servant leadership is probably the most talked about leadership model of our generation. It’s a term coined by Robert Greenleaf, a man who said he was always informed by the Judeo-Christian ethic and who (at mid-life) became a Quaker. He felt, though, that servant leadership has universal application.¹

Servant leadership is well accepted in the corporate world where its benefits include closer contact with customers (because of decentralized decision-making), avoidance of greed-based behaviours (because the interests of all stakeholders are considered), and better innovation (due to its focus on empathy and listening that lead to greater open-mindedness).

But servant leadership particularly resonates with Christians leaders because of Jesus’ example and sayings:

• Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mat 20:26-28
• But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves. Luke 22:26-27

Jesus as a Model of Servant Leadership

Jesus’ most dramatic teaching of servant leadership occurs when he washes his disciples’ feet (John 13:1-17). If ministry leaders want to be servant leaders, should they act like domestic servants in imitation of Jesus? Should they serve coffee for the staff? At the end of the day, do servant leaders become valets, bringing cars to the door for their staff? No. A leader may do acts of service just as any person might do for another, but this is thoughtful kindness, not servant leadership. Jesus’ point was much bigger than this. We need to understand his teaching methodology to get it.

Jesus used hyperbole as a teaching tool. When he told people to pluck out their eyes and cut off their hands and feet (Mark 9:43-47), he didn’t mean that they should literally go and do so. He was reinforcing the point of how serious sin is: it is better to live eternally in heaven and suffer a disability in this temporary life than it is to go to hell forever in exchange for the short-lived pleasures of sin.

Furthermore, he didn’t promise to wash the disciples’ feet every time they entered a room. It was a single act of hyperbole to teach a lesson, contrasting the ways of God’s kingdom and human kingdoms. In God’s kingdom, rulers rule for the welfare of the people, not their own.

Thinking that having his feet washed by Jesus would actually accomplish something, Peter wanted to be completely bathed to get more of whatever benefit washing provided. By taking Jesus’ symbolic act literally, he missed the point. At least he had a good heart!

Christian Leaders Serve Jesus Christ

Christian leaders, like all Christians, serve Jesus. Jesus likewise served his Father. Recognizing this, Henry and Richard Blackaby wrote in Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God’s Agenda that we should not dream up what we can do for God, but ask God what he has already planned for us to do (Eph 2:10).²

Christian leaders must therefore be spiritually sensitive to receive God’s leading. If you’d like to learn more about attuning yourself to God, a great guide is Space for God: The Study and Practice of Spirituality and Prayer. I also have a series “Hearing God Speak.”

Christian service includes not only what we do, but also how we do it, so Christian leaders serve Christ by working on godly goals in godly ways.

Christian Leaders Serve Their Ministry’s Mission

Ministry leaders must dedicate their leadership to the organization’s mission, which is the ministry’s raison d’être. Leaders serve the mission by gathering people and resources to work together on it. They:

• lead people in group discernment
• challenge people to be and do their best
• keep the mission in front of their teams
• watch for mission drift and keep the ministry on course

Christian Leaders Serve Their Boards

Boards are the guardians of their organization’s mission, values and risk tolerances. They may do more than that, but all boards have these three primary responsibilities:

• governing what a ministry does
• defining its character traits
• deciding when the ends do, or do not, justify the means

They also hire, oversee, and terminate the senior leader, so the senior leader is a servant of the board.

Senior leaders serve their boards by following their directions and policies, and accomplishing their goals.

Christian Leaders Serve Their Beneficiaries

We, the people of God, exist because God wants us to be a light to the world through whom all peoples will be blessed, so ministry leaders serve their ministry’s beneficiaries first by understanding them and their circumstances, and then by working for their welfare.

Christian Leaders Serve Their Organizations

Finally, leaders serve their organizations through excellent leadership by:

• pursuing their own personal and professional development
• modeling what the ministry values
• caring for the organization’s health, including the professional development of its staff and volunteers

Leaders must always be thinking about what is best for the organization – for its viability, performance, and reputation.

Servant Leadership Attitudes

Servant leadership is not just about doing, it is also about a way of thinking. It is about recognizing a higher authority than one’s self, and acknowledging that the goal of leadership is to benefit others. Here are some of the essential attitudes that support servant leadership.

Humility: Christian leaders realize they are serving in their leadership role not by right or by merit, but by the grace and call of God, which is jointly discerned by the leader and those who are in authority over the leader.

Gratitude: There is a healthy sense of wonder that comes with being appointed to a position of leadership, a wonder that keeps the focus on service and away from self. Leadership is never about the leader, but about the mission. When a leader makes it about the person, or allows others to make it about the person, the leader has strayed from true Christian leadership. Christian leaders serve with an attitude of gratitude (thanks to Zig Ziglar for coining such a memorable phrase!). They are thankful for the opportunity to serve and for the confidence that others have placed in them. Here’s a great post on having an attitude of gratitude that is well worth reading, especially if you are working on a Saturday (like I am right now!).

Sober Self-Assessment: Examining one’s own performance is a way of acknowledging accountability for service given to another. A leader might assess:

• Motives – what is driving me? Would I be willing to admit my deepest motives in public?
• Effect on other people – How do other people experience my leadership?
• Feelings – What causes me joy or hurt? Is it appropriate?
• Ego – I know I need a healthy ego, but are my ego needs driving my leadership behaviour?

Exaltation: Rather than drawing attention to themselves, Christian leaders exalt Jesus by pointing to him and giving him the glory for the work of the ministry

Servant Leadership Metaphors

There are some great biblical metaphors (other than servant) that leaders would do well to reflect on. Each conveys an aspect of servant leadership. I’ll let you have the fun of exploring these on your own. They include:

• Shepherd (compare John 10:11-15 with Ezekiel 34)
• Steward (eg., Titus 1:7-8)
• Mother (I Thessalonians 2:7-8)
• Father (I Thessalonians 2:11-12)

Leading While Serving

Leaders are supposed to get results, and some leaders may worry that servant leadership will jeopardize their ability to do that. Not to worry. Servant leadership is leadership for the benefit of others, not a specific leadership process. For example, Jesus, James, and Paul were all servant leaders, and yet each used a different decision-making process.

• Jesus didn’t recruit a group of disciples to problem solve how to get Israel to fulfill its purpose. He knew what had to happen and where they should go, and even when the disciples objected (for instance, going to Judea in John 11:1-16), Jesus went ahead and led them where he knew they should go.
• James led the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 allowing everyone to give their opinions. He then made the decision by himself for the Council and gave his reasons for it.
• Paul had a vision in Acts 16 which he presented to his team, and together they agreed on its interpretation.

Whichever way leaders choose to lead, if they do it in a godly way for the welfare of others, they can be servant leaders. Now it must be said that normally leaders will want to include as many people as possible in their leadership deliberations because it is so beneficial for everyone. It:

• draws on the wisdom of the group
• contributes to each member’s professional development
• improves buy-in to the decisions that are made
• allows team members to make better decisions in their own realm of responsibility because they have the big picture

Consulting with team members does not preclude giving them instructions. Consulting and directing are complementary activities.

The best example I can give of consultation followed by direction is the leadership process used by the Devil’s Brigade. This was an elite joint Canadian-American World War Two commando force in which my uncle, Graham Neilson, was a 1st Lieutenant. (He served in the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment of the First Special Service Force, the official name of “The Devil’s Brigade.”)

When a mission was being planned, everyone contributed to the planning. The best ideas, no matter whose they were, floated to the top and a consensus was reached. But once the plan was put into action, the highly disciplined team instantly followed every command from the leaders.

Conclusion

Servant leaders find great joy working towards something much bigger than themselves. They are passionate about using their gifts and capabilities for the benefit of the world around them, and they draw others to that same mission, creating an organization in which all staff who are similarly motivated can find fulfillment.

The post Servant Leaders: Whom Do They Serve? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

I recently read  The Measure of Our Success: An Impassioned Plea to Pastors by Shawn Lovejoy. His urgent cause is to get pastors away from the three Cs of unhealthy measurement: comparing, copying, and condemning, because they are based on the wrong definition of success. We’re not trying to prove ourselves better than another church, or to copy and become another church or to put down another church by, say, attributing their success to a watering down of the Gospel. We are all trying to be faithful to the way God wants us to live and work and to the  mission he has given us. Given that noble calling, Lovejoy quickly knocks down the idols of bigness, numbers, fame and so forth that many pastors unintentionally serve.

The starting place for measuring mission success is theological reflection on your ministry’s mission. What is God’s heart for your mission? What does he have to say about it? What is his ultimate goal that he wants your mission to achieve? The answers to these questions will define what mission success is for your ministry.

Measurements Must Measure Mission, Values, and Strategy

One of the best questions I’ve come up with to help me decide what to measure is, How will the answer matter? What will we do differently depending on the answer? If the answer is nothing, or nothing significant, then find something better to measure. Did people enjoy the sermon or the worship? Good, but does that really matter? The real issue based on the mission of the church is, Did they change an attitude, have a new insight, or make a decision as a result of the sermon or worship? Will anything change in their life?

So don’t measure the unimportant things. Look for the important things, things that will cause you to make significant changes based on the answer. Important things are directly related to your:

• Mission: The purpose you are trying to fulfill
• Values: The non-negotiable values you will abide by while operating your ministry
• Strategies: The key initiatives for accomplishing the mission

Mission, values and strategy are important. Focus on them and measure how you are doing in each of them. That is what will move your church forward.

Numbers Don’t Count, Percentages Do!

The Great Commission is all about conversion and discipleship. One measurement that Lovejoy promotes is the number of baptisms in a year compared to the average number of worship attendees. That gives a percentage, so big churches and small churches are on a level playing field. As Lovejoy says, “You don’t have to be big to be successful.” He’s not interested in the size of the congregation but in the rate of conversion growth.

He does the same thing for discipleship. He measures the percentage of worship attendees who are “active in biblical community, meaning small groups of people who are connecting together with God, doing life with and serving each other, and reaching out to people outside the community of believers.” Small groups are a key component of discipleship.

 Self-Worth

The bulk of Lovejoy’s book is actually aimed at helping pastors find their self-worth and security in who they are, rather than in the churches they lead. Pastors would do well to consider his advice relating to their own personal vitality, their relationship with their ministry team, and how to keep going when you feel like quitting.

Other Metrics for Churches

Lovejoy says that we need to take the Great Commandment seriously, to love one another, and to focus on the fruit of our ministries. He doesn’t actually develop a metric in this area, but since pastors are given to the church for the equipping of the saints for the work of service (Eph 4:12), then another measurement would be the percentage of worship attendees who are involved in volunteer service in the church or elsewhere, or who have an active, personal ministry of showing love to other people. Here, I’m thinking of a widow in my church who for thirty years has made it her personal ministry to serve other widows in our church. It’s not a program, it is a purely personal effort on her part to be Christ to her widow ‘neighbours’. The point of this metric is, are people doing something with their faith (James 2:14-18)?

If you want conversion growth, you must have people involved with your church who don’t yet know Christ. They could be attending worship, a small group, or a regular participant in one of your ministries. Find out how many people your church has a relationship with who aren’t yet believers. The higher the percentage of total people your church touches to your worship attendance, the more opportunities you have for conversion growth.

If your church is going to grow and multiply, you need lay leaders for small groups and other needs. What percentage of your worship attendance are either currently ministry leaders or being developed to become a ministry leader?

In the end, it is not about numbers, but about results. Paul put it quite well when he wrote to Timothy, “As for you…fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim 4:5 – ESV)

“Book has been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller.”

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