Leave Only Footprints

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I grew up hiking in the backwoods of South Lake Tahoe.  One of the first rules I learned about hiking was “To leave only footprints.”  The second rule grew from the first, “Leave the the campsite better than you found it.”  You may be thinking, “Okay, great.  What does this have to do with church anything?”

A few weeks ago I, or we the church, had to send of a very involved family away.  This family has been a HUGE blessing to me through the restarting journey.  They brought a depth of spirituality and service that was lacking early on.  Loosing families are painful, but some are more painful than others.  This was a painful one that came with joy.  Nothing bad happened, God moves people in and out through a variety of circumstances.  My time with this family was up and they moved on to another city to open a new chapter in their lives.

On their last Sunday, I brought them to the front of the church to love on them through having people share about how God used them in their lives and to pray for them as we sent them out to their new home and church.  In my comments I said to them, “I hope I left you better than I found you.  You know, like camping.”  It got a good chuckle, but they assured me that I had.  In this moment I learned a valuable lesson.

Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed,  shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness;  nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.  And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Peter 5:1-4, NASB)

“…for the keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.” (Hebrews 13:17b, NASB)

People that we shepherd come and go throughout our ministries–it is inevitable.  When a person shows up at church, or calls you on the phone, or zaps you an email, you don’t know how much time God will give you to shepherd them.  He may give you days or years you never know how long you have with that person.  But from the above passages, it is a sober reminder that we as shepherds will give an account for the impact we had on the lives of those we shepherd.  I want people to leave their encounter with me walking closer to God than before we met.

The more I consider this post, I realize this is more of a prayer to be prayed.  There are times when managing my own life and family seems daunting, let alone being responsible for so many others that God has entrusted to my care.  My prayer is that God would enable me, and those who shepherd a flock of people, to shepherd the flock in a way that leaves them walking closer to Him–whether we have one contact or many alongside them.

 

Lessons from Pastoring Two Churches

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As many of you may already know, I have recently begun transitioning myself out of the two churches that I pastor. God has called us to take a step of faith and head up to Southern Washington for our next assignment. But I wanted to take some time and reflect on my experience of pastoring two churches. Experience is an awesome teacher.

To set the stage, (Calvary North Bay was planted in 2007 with one other family. CNB resides in Mill Valley, California which is one of the least churched (statistically) and most affluent communities in one of the most least churched and affluent counties in the country (Marin County). Marin County rests between San Francisco and the Napa Valley. Very quickly after we started the fellowship, we had people coming to the church from San Francisco. It was a short drive over the bridge to Mill Valley. They would often bring their friends for a visit. It was an almost universal, “We love this church. Too bad it isn’t in the city.” That began our process that culminated with the launching of Calvary San Francisco in July of 2010. We did a 9 am service in Mill Valley and then an 11:15 am service in the Marina district of San Francisco. Each church was it’s own corporation, with its own staff, resources and accounting. We did this primarily because we knew that, at some point, each church would need its own pastor.

So let’s get to the lessons. But before I do, I should say up front that in hindsight, the hand of God was all over this. I do not have a single regret about it. The Lord’s plan was to put new churches in both Mill Valley and San Francisco. I rejoice in that. But I learned a lot on the way.

1. Pastoring two churches is ecclesiastical polygamy

Very quickly into my time pastoring the two churches did I realize that it was like being married to two wives. Polygamy has a certain impact on a husband. It has other impact on the wives. For the husband, his attention and affection is divided. It is hard to try and navigate the needs of two different congregations. But for the wives it is the reality that you never have your husband for your own. There is always a ‘sharing’ involved. For the church in Mill Valley, they had been used to having me all to themselves so splitting me was a change for them. For the church in the city, they were never used to me alone, only to having me shared. They were used to the divided attention. From both angles, it was not something that was healthy long term.

2. Pastoring two churches should be seen as a sprint portion of a marathon of ministry

The apostle Paul spoke often of our Christian lives as a race. We need to run that race to win the prize. In that way, we are all marathon runners for the glory of God. In stepping out to plant the church in San Francisco, I realized very quickly that I was entering a ‘sprint’ portion of my race. Sprints are necessary parts of running any race. But in reality, you can only sprint for so long. If you watch short term sprint racers, you see that they are going very fast and at the end of the race, they are winded. You can sprint for a short time only. Too many ministers (including me) fail to realize that ministry is a marathon. There will be seasons of sprinting. But it can only be a season.

3. Multi-siting is more strategic than pastoring two distinct churches

I know that there is a lot of hub-bub about multi-siting churches, with both strong advocates and detractors. Rather than weigh in on that fracas, I did learn that it is way more strategic to multi-site than to pastor two churches. If you multi-site, there is one cohesive vision, staff, direction and congregation (although meeting in multiple places). The pastor can do one midweek service rather than two. The pastor has only one set of volunteers and staff to pour into. You can do more things together. Plus there is one church identity with a multi-site church as opposed to two identities. When we did things together as churches, there was always a negotiation of where to hold something. So, in my mind, the unity of one church in multiple locations (an oxymoron, I know) is more strategic then two churches in two locations.

4. We need to continue to raise up pastors and leaders

Finally, I had a strong reinforcement of the need to continue to raise up pastors, leaders and church planters. There are such needs for rigorously biblical, Spirit filled, saint loving pastors all over the world. We have always said that we would love to see ten new churches in Marin and thirty new churches in San Francisco. That’s forty pastors needed (and just in about a 20 mile radius)! We need to continue to pour into the next generation and sent these folks out into God’s harvest field. The field is ripe for harvest and still the laborers are few!

How to Wake the Dead

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“…You shall be Witnesses to Me…”[1] – Jesus  


“If you are a Calvary Chapel pastor or in teaching leadership, chances are you are concerned about the death of biblical truth in our culture and within our churches…As a pastor or teacher, you have the privilege of expositing and expounding God’s truth to your community.”[2] – Chuck Smith

Speaking of the biblical gospel in a letter written to a group of believers living in Rome during the first century, the Apostle Paul said it is, “The power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…”[3]  That is a brilliant statement of truth!  The word gospel literally means good news.  The message of the biblical gospel is that even though human beings are spiritual criminals who are evil from the core of their being, God still loves them.  It tells us that though all humans have broken God’s law and heart at the level of behavior, desire, and imagination, God has chosen to freely provide a way for us to be totally forgiven for our crimes.  He has made a way for us to know and enjoy Him forever in personal relationship.  We have a way to be viewed by God as perfect and righteous even though we know deep down we could never be those things practically speaking, from the inside out.

 

The Rescue Mission of Rescue Missions

How in the world could these things be possible?  Only through the life, death, and resurrection Jesus Christ accomplished on our behalf some 2,000 years ago.  The core of the good news of the gospel is that the infinite, totally adequate, self-sufficient, self-existent Holy God of the universe came to earth to reach out to humanity when we had no way of reaching up to Him in an effective way.  This was the greatest rescue mission the world has ever seen, or will ever see. He came and was born to a young virgin girl named Mary becoming not only God, but also 100% human.  He proceeded to live a life of perfect obedience to the law of God in behavior, desire, and imagination on behalf of every sinful human being.  He died the death that every person who has ever lived deserves to die on a roman cross as a substitute for all people.  There He took the full force of the wrath of God that we deserve to experience as spiritual criminals.  He rose from the dead conquering the power of Satan, sin, demons, and death on behalf of all.  He now offers us forgiveness for our sins and restoration to relationship with Him if we will simply believe in this great message of His love.  This God, who came from heaven to earth to do for us all that we could never do for ourselves, is the God-man, Jesus Christ!  This is His gospel.

The Fundamental Goal of Church Planting

The basic tenets of that message inherently carry the power of God to bring the person who accepts them from spiritual death to an experience of spiritual life if they are embraced with the heart.  It is that message that Jesus has commanded His people to proclaim boldly and without shame or fear in all the earth.  The fundamental goal of planting local churches is to establish strategic centers for the preaching, spreading, and advancement of the gospel in the world for the glory of the gracious Christ.  A church should not be planted but with the goal of functioning as an effective tool for spreading the message of Jesus in the world.  If a gathering, organization, or any so-called Christian entity exists without the express purpose of spreading the powerful gospel, it is not a church.  It is not representative of the church.

 

We need churches like the first century church in Thessalonica.  Paul commended that local church as being a community of believers who were on fire for spreading the gospel they had received.

“And you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became examples to all in Macedonia and Achaia who believe.  For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place.  Your faith toward God has gone out, so that we do not need to say anything.  For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”[4]

 

The community of believers at Thessalonica didn’t simply receive the gospel, get saved, and sit around playing church and enjoying their relationship with Jesus as they watched the rest of the world go to hell.  On the contrary, they became a center for missional gospel proclamation.  The gospel was sounding forth from the mouths of people who had their hearts changed by it’s power.  The joy over their salvation implanted into their hearts by the Holy Spirit who now indwelled them caused an overflow of gospel preaching and gospel living that brought many more people into the kingdom.

 

Every church planter’s goal should be that God would establish a church through him that is like the church in Thessalonica.  Their dream should be that of a group of people being saved by Jesus through gospel preaching who become so passionate about the gospel of the God who saved them that they spread it everywhere they can.  This is the New Testament picture of a mature and gospel-planted church.  This is the kind of church I pray for, and work toward by God’s grace.

 

The Command

Planting churches through gospel preaching is not merely one permissible option for church planting strategies among many.   It is church planting as God has commanded it to be done.

 

I know by experience that there is intense pressure from within and from without for church planters to get clever with their preaching.  You see some guys who have flashy churches, major resources, tons of money, and yet the weakest sermons in regard to biblical content.  After a while you might start to wonder if just teaching the Bible simply isn’t enough.  So you start softening a truth here, glossing over a doctrine there, and all in the name of reaching people.

 

Over against this kind of thinking is the teaching of the Holy Spirit in the Bible:

“And I, brethren, when I came to you did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God.  For U determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.  And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”[5]

 

Now when it comes to preaching there are generally two extremes that should be avoided at all costs.  Some think that using technology, media, props, and even illustrations to effectively communicate the gospel is carnal and unfaithful.  These people confuse flexibility in methods with compromising the integrity of the message.  Jesus Himself was a master illustrator who used the familiar pictures and experiences in the environment and technology around Him to communicate God’s timeless truths in timely ways to His hearers.

 

Still others are so focused on methods and strategic communication that they sometimes fail to actually present the simple content of the gospel faithfully.  The pure message of the Bible gets twisted or lost in all the wrappings.  These people seem to forget that while good missionaries are culturally sensitive and utilize practical tools and technology to communicate the gospel, the methods and techniques are not what God has promised to bless with His power.  The simple gospel message is what God blesses with the accompanying power of the Holy Spirit to bring people from spiritual death to life.  I once heard Francis Chan ask a group of Bible teachers, “Do you want to be a good communicator, or a powerful communicator?”  We would do well to ask ourselves that question.

 

The Choice is Ours

So, every church planter has to decide where he will fit.  Will you focus on methods to the exclusion of the message like many seeker sensitive and liberal churches do today?  Will you be a fundamentalist and preach the Bible but ignore the cultural communication stumbling blocks that get in the way of the people who hear you receiving the gospel?  Or will you be in the missional middle and preach the simple gospel faithfully while being sensitive to the cultural hang-ups of the ears who hear you?

If you are all method in your ministry I would challenge you to get back to the real source of power which is the simple gospel.  You can have nothing but the power of the Holy Spirit and the pure message of the gospel in your heart, and you will have all you need to plant a church.  That is all that the first church planters had and they did well to say the least.  I would encourage you to read Acts two and pray over the topics we’ve covered so far in this post right now asking God to show you if and where your heart is out of step with His on the gospel.

 

How to Reach Young People

Something that always concerns church planters is how they are going to reach young people for Jesus.  Many leaders are convinced that kids need to be entertained and have all sorts of extra wrappings encapsulating the gospel and the teaching of the Word for them to plug into churches.  I believe this is a lie from hell intended to get Bible teachers side-tracked.

 

I was as liberal and post-modern as they come when it came to my view of truth before Jesus saved me.  I can vividly remember personally saying many of the things that pastors often quote in their sermons as depicting the epitome of the post-modern mindset.  I would give people the, “what’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me,” line all the time.  And I believed that with all my heart.

 

But one life-changing day the Holy Spirit shot the truth of God into my mind like a bullet.  I couldn’t defend myself against it.  I couldn’t force it out.  He convicted me of my sin and drew me to seek God.  I found myself reading the Bible at home strangely desiring to figure out it’s teachings, something I had never desired to do before.  I remember that as I read I realized that what this book said was true of my heart was undeniable based on my human experience.  I knew it was right when it told me I couldn’t help wanting and doing things that I knew deep down were things I shouldn’t do or want to do.  I knew it was right when it told me I couldn’t make myself do or want to do things that I knew deep down I should want to do and practice.  I knew my heart was captive with the chains of sin it described.  This was my journey to becoming born again through reading the written Word.

 

After I got saved I developed an appetite for the Word like newborn babies desire milk.  I could understand the Bible where I hadn’t been able to before, and I wanted to learn God’s Word.  I found a Bible teaching church and began to soak up what I was hearing.  And the funny thing looking back is that the church I attended was about the least cool place I’d ever been from my previous cultural perspective.  The “new music” we sang were worship choruses from the 1970’s, the décor of the church looked like it was supplied by my grandmother, the pastor preached in a full suit, and the only visual images in the service were these poorly done and horridly distracting landscape scenes that would appear at random behind the lyrics on the projection screen.  You know what kept an artsy former metal and punk rock musician/social activist coming to such a lame place?  I knew I was getting stronger in the spirit through the unadulterated preaching of God’s Word!

 

Many of my friends have been saved from similar backgrounds to mine and have the same kind of stories to tell.  And as I meet lots of young people who come to the church I pastor and hear them talk about why they are with us, it isn’t the cool lighting, awesome band, or the fact that I listen to the music they do that keeps them coming; it’s the often blunt, sometimes offensive, always present preaching of gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of God!

 

If you’re an older church planter or pastor trying to reach a younger generation, my encouragement to you would be to stick with the thing that God has chosen to bless with His power, and preach the gospel!  Teach the Bible!  Sure, you can draw a crowd with all sorts of things.  But the only thing that will change people, the only thing that will grip them at the core of their very being, is God’s Word.

 

Conclusion

The preaching of the gospel is what Jesus has chosen to build His church.  Preaching the simple gospel isn’t merely an optional way to do the work of church planting, but the only way.  Utilizing different methods to communicate the gospel is fine and can even be good missionary strategy, but methods must never get in the way of communicating the simple gospel message in the power of the Holy Spirit. If we want to wake the dead gospel proclamation is a non-negotiable.

 

Note- The above is an excerpt taken from “The Spirit-led Mission” by Kellen Criswell

[1] Acts 1:8b NKJV

[2] Smith, Chuck. Line Upon Line. Page 12.

[3] Romans 1:16 NKJV

[4] 1 Thessalonians 1:10 NKJV

[5] 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 NKJV

“Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?”

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“…as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.”
Matthew 9:10
A couple weeks ago I had wanted to sit down and just read through the Gospel according to Matthew in one or two sittings…fat chance. I am in chapter 9 this morning. But there is a reason why.
I have always seen the practical aspects of the life and teaching of Christ in the Gospels, but not like I am seeing it now. I have been literally overwhelmed at the profound practical application of the teachings and examples of Jesus in his instruction to His disciples, in word and in deed.
Matthew’s account of Jesus calling him to follow Him has been standing out to me the last couple of days. Jesus calls Matthew to follow Him, and where does Jesus go? To Matthew’s house. And what does Jesus do? He eats dinner there with all of His disciples and with Matthew. And what is the result of Jesus and His disciples having dinner with Matthew in his home? A bunch of other tax collectors and “sinners” end up coming over to hang out with Matthew…but this wasn’t new…it was Jesus and the disciples of Jesus that they wanted to see. This was new.
And it bothered the religious establishment. The question came, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
One of the thoughts I have been having is, “Do I do this?” or am I just inviting those to my house who can repay me by doing the same?
“When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” Luke 14:12-14
Jesus then tells the parable about the Great Supper. The religious make excuses as to why they cannot attend and the result is that they are left outside. Another thing we see is that there is plenty of room at the King’s Table. “Do I believe this?” Is my life showing that I know there to be more than enough room for others to find their seat at the Master’s table? “Am I doing this?” if I believe it, my actions (my life) prove it. Not my sermons or my expositions or philosophies or my ideologies or my vision or my exhortations…but my very actions will show if I know His word to be true.
And following Jesus to “sup” with “sinners” will lead to an opportunity to be real, approachable, available and then afford us a believable and tangible platform to share the truth that God desires to fellowship with them and also the open invitation to find the seat that has been prepared for them at the King’s table.
“But go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

A different APPROACH for recruiting children’s ministry leaders.

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I have the need to be brief.  It’s been a crazy week with some refugee high school boys having serious conflict with a Hispanic gang at two of the public high schools here in Phoenix.  I’ve been interacting with the Phoenix Police, an apartment manager, some leaders from a Burmese Karen Christian church and others.  The police are convinced a major retaliation will take place against one or more of the Burmese kids.  AND, I have to fly out tomorrow morning to California for the birth of my grand daughter, the third child of my oldest daughter and our 5th grand child.  Please keep the gang situation in prayer.  It’s a bit dicey from a number of angles.

A conversation with a young pastor the other day made me realize that my solution for recruiting children’s ministry teachers/leaders is much more unorthodox than I realize.  Here’s my personal history and why I APPROACH this subject so differently:

1.  When I went on staff as the assistant pastor of my church in late 1985, I stepped into the responsibility of managing the children’s ministry.  This meant that I had the job of setting up the schedule, selecting the curriculum, recruiting the teachers/leaders, evaluating those that volunteered, and then training them for service with the children.

2.  Having been raised Catholic, the whole idea of a separate ministry for children during the church service was completely foreign to me until I attended a “born-again” church the first time.  From that first service I attended until the day I became responsible for the children’s ministry of my church four and a half years later, there was one blurb that took up space in every bulletin every Sunday morning that whole time.  It was the blurb that communicated the great need….no, the great OPPORTUNITY that existed in the children’s ministry for servants!  Based on that week-in, week-out, year-in, year-out, perpetual blurb, it was obviously an aspect of the local church that not many people were actually interested in helping with.  It was obvious to me in the various churches that I attended that there were way more than enough people sitting in the services to cover the amount of children that needed to be taught.

3.  When Jesus grabbed my life, I surrendered to Him and joyfully sought to serve Him in any capacity He’d have for me and I was willing to meet whatever need He brought into my path.  The more I understood His Word, looked at the examples of the lives of the people recorded in His Word, and heard other believers talk in awe about some great Christian from history, the common thread was their willingness to serve and the fact that they actually did serve.

4.  Because of these things, I never understood why every church could never seem to find enough people to serve children.  Even with the obvious need laid out so clearly each week, I found it strange that there was a constant famine of teachers/leaders in the area of children’s ministry.  What really bugged me was the fact that I knew most of the people attending those services and if you asked any of them, they would all describe themselves as “servants” of the Lord Jesus Christ.  So apparently, the Lord Jesus Christ didn’t really care about ministry to children or else He surely would order His servants to serve there and they would joyfully do so. Especially they all proclaimed themselves His servants, right?

5.  Now that I was face to face with needing to find servants of Jesus that actually were willing to serve Jesus in a ministry that was was obviously close to His heart, I knew I had an uphill battle.  How do you get people that claim to be servants of Jesus to actually serve Him by serving children?  Obviously, sharing the need and waiting for them to respond–to volunteer, wasn’t working.  In fact, my first few weeks in that role, I had a couple of people volunteer that it was obvious really weren’t cut out for children’s ministry for one reason or another.  And I had to tell them that.  And one of them asked me why we were always asking for volunteers and then when somebody does volunteer, they get rejected.

I knew something was radically wrong with this picture, and from a number of different angles.

6.  After talking with 5 or 6 children’s ministry directors from other churches during my first few weeks in my new role, my thinking was provoked by one of the people I talked to.  As I thought and prayed about this ongoing, apparently insatiable need, the Lord led me to view things from a different perspective and thus to make a change in how we were doing things in this area.

7.  So, I changed my children’s ministry teacher/leader recruitment APPROACH.  I figured since all of these people claimed to be servants of Jesus, I would observe which ones came early to the service and then stood around talking after the service.  I especially zeroed in on those who had their own kids, but I also began observing those who would be talking and when other people’s kids came near by, began interacting with them and so forth….and did so joyfully.

8.  Then I stopped putting a blurb in the bulletin, and started APPROACHING those that I’d been observing.  I would tell them that I’ve seen their faithfulness in attending the church, their willingness to be early and not just head for the parking lot when the service was over.  I told them that I’ve seen them interact with their own kids or other people’s kids, and that I thought they might have a gift with children that God could use.  I told them of the needs in our children’s ministry and since they were obviously a servant of the Lord Jesus, that I would appreciate it if they would begin praying about serving Jesus by serving in the children’s ministry of our church–which always has a great need.  I gave them a brief overview of it would require of them to take this step and then I told them I’d get back with them in two weeks to see what God had shown them.

9.  The response to this APPROACH was amazing.  Literally 80 percent of those I APPROACHED responded positively and went through the process necessary to become a part of the children’s ministy, (application, interview, training, etc.)  I asked them for a 6 month commitment and told them we would see how they felt about things at the end of that time.  I also changed the schedule so that it was a 3 weeks on and one week off, or a one week on and 3 weeks off commitment for a 6 month period.  Many of them chose to start by being the once a month person, but quite a few chose the 3 weeks on commitment.

10.  In the churches I’ve senior pastored since then, our bulletin has been children’s ministry blurb-less.

So, my APPROACH to finding children’s ministry teachers/leaders is to basically APPROACH self-proclaimed servants of Jesus personally and see if they actually mean what they say.

The Leaders Litmus Test

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One of the areas that God is really growing me in is how I choose leaders, especially elders in our church. Going into our church plant I thought I had a pretty good handle on 1 Timothy 3:1-7. I had taught on it and understood the exegetical context of the passage. What I didn’t know was the practical implications of the text in an individuals life. I now understand what God said to Samuel when He was choosing David as king over his more appealing brothers. We need to look at the heart of our leaders as opposed to outward appearances.

Here are a few things I’ve learned in picking leaders

  1. They Must Be Above Reproach: I always took this as no one could bring a charge against them and that is true to a point but it goes beyond that. Are they controlled by anything except the Holy Spirit? What I found out is that this takes time to see which is why Paul told Timothy not to raise anyone up too soon. You need to see someone in your church for several seasons to truly see their character.
  2. They Must be Sober-Minded: Beyond being controlled by anything are they dependent upon any substances? I am amazed at how alcoholism is reemerging in the church. This is especially true within the younger generation. So many good people I have known have ended up being closet alcoholics. Paul intimates that Elders should refrain from drinking all together. Leaders are to be under control of their bodies.
  3. They Must Not Be Quarrelsome: I know playing Devil’s Advocate is a popular thing but the name alone insinuates that it isn’t godly. Devil’s Advocates like a good debate and thrive on the argument. I know it is important not to have yes-men as leaders but someone who is continually opposing every idea for the sake of bringing up the other side brings division and quarreling into a leadership team. If you have a prospective leader who tends to have issues with everything then it is only going to get worse when they become an Elder.
  4. They Must Manage Their Money Well: So much emphasis is put on greed in this passage but greed manifests itself in many ways. Most prospective leaders aren’t looking to the church for personal gain like in Paul’s day but it still rears it’s head in other ways. So many leaders need to be disqualified because their financial house isn’t in order. I joke about it but sometimes I want to run a credit check on potential Elders. I have worked with men who look ideal to be an elder only to find out their house is being foreclosed on. In my book the choice to buy more house than you can afford falls in the greed category. A person with this going on in their life then transfers their renewed frugal lifestyle to the church and attacks any excessive expenditure (in their opinion) the church makes.
  5. They Must Manage Their Household Well: A true test of the leadership skills of any potential leader/elder is seen in their children. Are the children rebellious? Do they love Jesus? Go beyond those and look at how the children attend church. Do they come on a consistent basis? What is their disposition when they do attend? If the children are grown adults do they choose to attend the same church as their father (granted the church is one that appeals to that age group)? If you don’t see these in the children then there is a high likelihood that there is some hypocrisy in the home. The parents, and usually the father, are acting one way at church and one way at home.

All of these are signs someone is either not ready or not qualified to be a leader or elder at your church. This doesn’t mean they can’t serve in some capacity but leadership is a special calling and impacts a lot more people than just serving. Do your due diligence in this area. It is much better to go without than to attempt to minister with the wrong leader in place. Be slow to bring on new leaders but be quick to remove them if they are disqualified.

Becoming Dangerous

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Reposted from Peyton Jones @ New Breed Church Planting

Why is it that when a guy graduates seminary the one thing that he’s ill equipped to do is most of the stuff that Paul did in the book of Acts?

Think about it.

If there was one thing that you’d want to train guys to do…

If there was one thing that you’d want guys to be able to do…

Wouldn’t you want to be releasing dangerous delta force teams, or the spiritual equivalent of Navy Seal deployment platoons that were able to infiltrate, accomplish their mission, and then spread out to the next assignment?

Instead, we have generations of guys who can navigate church politics, write blogs, drink coffee, and discuss the finer points of theology.

Our problem is that for too long the church has been content to hold ground instead of take ground. We’ve been content being the army when we should have been rushing the No Man’s Land as bullet stopping Marines. The churches command from Jesus was not to “hold till I return” but to “secure the beachhead” of every distant shore.

The fact is, every time that God has sent His Spirit in power, a wave of pioneering daredevils has charged the gates of hell. The Lollards, Luther’s missionary monks, Zinzendorf and the Moravians, Wesley and Whitefield, the Cambridge Seven, J. Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ?

By the time that Paul lost his head on the Appian Way, he’d set in place a posse of at least 32 pioneering missionaries who were ready to take his place as “sent out ones”. The fact is, they had been trained to pick up where Paul had left off, and they were already doing it when he was sitting in a Roman prison.

Paul’s methodology was not to lock a bunch of guys in a classroom. Paul studied and it did him good. Don’t get me wrong, attending a seminary can have great benefit. I’ve been, and I survived. I learned a bunch. I’m grateful. However, it didn’t prepare, or equip me to plant churches, perform an exorcism, or pray in faith that somebody might actually get healed in the name of Jesus (instead of just praying that the Doctor is given great skill). It didn’t prepare me to help those dealing with heroin addiction, or pornography. It didn’t prepare me to enter a city and spearhead the gospel with covert or public strategy to crash the mainframe of the enemy? Don’t you think it strange that we’re “preparing” guys for ministry, and when they’re done, they’re terrified to leave their offices and take risks for the Kingdom.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury once remarked, “Where ever Paul went, they threw a riot. Where ever I go, they throw a tea party.”

The equivalent would be to ship a handful of commandos to a weapons depot for a couple of years and assign them with memorizing the weapons specs and counting the ammunition. Upon their release from “training” you wouldn’t expect them to storm any terrorist bunkers with any degree of success. The fact is, our men aren’t dangerous.

How then did Paul train train his “sent out ones” in the First Century?

Simple. Paul took them with him. All throughout Asia Minor, Paul planted churches and used them as training grounds to train up future planters like Timothy, Titus, Silvanus, and the other dangerous hombres that Paul tooled around with.

Paul’s methodology was

  1. I do, you watch
  2. You do, I watch
  3. I do, You do

Rinse and repeat with every one of the 32 “fellow workers” that Paul mentions in his epistles, and you’ll see that Paul’s OTJT (On The Job Training) was the most effective practice of preparing guys for ministry.

At least Jesus seemed to think so. He did it with 12 guys for 3 years.

At New Breed Church Planting, we equip guys “on the job” and train up dangerous ministers for the gospel. The stuff that you read about in the book of Acts can only be learnt on the front lines, not behind the desk in an air conditioned office where you hope that nobody will come in and interrupt you from your studies. As we plant a church in one area, we invite you to train with us. Don’t worry about the payback…when you plant, you’ll be training our guys on your turf. It worked in the First Century so much, that Paul was able to say that the Gospel had spread throughout the known world…in one generation!

So, what’ll it be…beat cop, or desk job?

 

 “Peyton Jones was born in Washington D.C. in 1973.  Raised in Huntington Beach California, he went into the ministry at Refuge Huntington Beach at the age of 19 years old.  After serving on staff for 6 years, Peyton obeyed the call as a missionary to Wales, UK, where he served for 12 years.  During that time he founded and established NEW BREED Church Planting and planted Pillar Community Church, Swansea.  In addition, he served as an evangelist at Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s legendary Bethlehem “Sandfields” in Port Talbot, served on the executive committee for the Evangelical Movement, and was a Contributing Editor to the Evangelical Magazine.  Peyton received his MA Theology: Pastoral Studies from W.E.S.T. (Wales Evangelical School of Theology) in 2011.”

Switching Fish Bowls

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For all but one year of my ministry life I’ve served in an area [North San Diego County, CA] that is blessed with an abundance of solid, biblically sound, evangelical churches. Southern California truly is a “Christian Disneyland.” At present the website for our ‘denomination’ lists 329 affiliate churches in California. Our administrative pastor at CCEsco has often joked, “You can’t swing a dead cat in San Diego without hitting a Calvary.”

All kidding aside, I think it is a good thing we have so many [good] churches in this area. Would to God that we had twice as many (or more) bible believing/teaching churches in California, and an exponential increase nationwide. In Escondido there are three Calvary’s (one of them Spanish speaking), which have a combined weekly adult attendance of about 1,000, in a city of 140,000+. There is certainly no lack of opportunity and no room for territorialism. The push for church planting and church revitalization is [to me] greatly encouraging. But I’m bothered by an observation I’m sure many pastors could identify with.

Week after week we have new faces in our fellowship. Rarely does a service go by where no one raises their hand to identify there self as a guest, or does not drop a visitor card in our offering or agape box for more information about the fellowship. The irritation comes when you interact with the newcomer and find that they’re attending your church, having left another solidly biblical church to do so. So, church growth does not always mean CHURCH growth, especially when Barna has, in recent years shown a > 90% increase of unchurched adults in America (approaching 100 million in 2007). (1) (2)

The landscape is filled with a multiplicity of varying sized fishbowls, in which the Christian [fish] swim. They were once caught in the sea of humanity by fishers of men, but now much of the [apparent] growth comes through fishbowl switching and not drawing in the net. Furthermore, much of church growth initiatives I see come across my desk are aimed at casting the net in other fishbowls. When a mailer goes out from a church with words like “rapture,” “sanctification,” or an advertisement for Phil Wickham leading worship, it’s not exactly aimed at non-believers. The fact is, spiritual inbreeding is twisted.

“Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church” said Outreach Magazine in 2006. There’s an awfully big sea of people out there needing to be caught. Jesus’ word’s to (the fisherman who never caught a fish apart from Jesus’ help) Peter, are appropriate…

“Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.”

Luke 5:4

The simplicity of Jesus’ command is striking; it surely went against everything that Peter’s expertise as a fishermen would have said. With all the writing out there on church growth, we sure seem to have a lot of expertise in our day too. Perhaps it’s time to seek the Lord for direction from the shore as to where to go for fish. His ways always seem to yield a draught.

Cutting the Cloth According to the Measure – Daniel Fusco

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Money is challenging. No matter how we look at it, it’s challenging.

Money can be especially challenging in a church plant. Unless you are planting a church with the backing of an organized denomination or church planting network, most church planters get a slap on the back and a ‘We’ll pray for you’. Now this is no doubt a viable church planting method (Calvary Chapels have planted over 1200 churches this way in 40 years doing largely that). But how does a church get off the ground with no outside support? The answer is simple. You cut the cloth according to the measure. I’ll explain the concept.

I remember when I planted the church in New Brunswick, NJ. The church that I came out of helped me afford the move cross the country and sent me a few hundred dollars for groceries about three times. That’s all the outside support that we received. So when it was time to start the church. We had almost nothing. We pieced together a sound system with mostly old beat up equipment. We couldn’t afford offering baskets so we bought a wicker basket on sale at the local arts and crafts store. We made some bulletins on some colored paper. We had little so we spent little. I distinctly remember when a church sent us a $500 gift and we were excited to buy ourselves a rack mounted cd burner to write the sermons to disc. We couldn’t afford to rent anything so we launched in the Rutgers University Student Center. It was free of charge as were an affiliated campus ministry. We met there at 2 pm on Sunday afternoons. We couldn’t afford to pay any sort of rent until some 8 months later when we could afford $400 a month to rent out the basement of a church that was built before the Revolutionary War. The church office was my bedroom for the first 2 ½ years of the church. We had to cut the cloth according to the measure. We had little resources so we had to do without.

When I planted the church in Mill Valley, we were blessed with some start up capital. The church in New Brunswick also made sure that we started with communion trays, offering baskets, and Bibles. Some wonderful folks blessed us in different ways and we were able to rent an office and Sunday morning worship space from the very beginning. It was a totally different experience than the church in New Brunswick. We had more resources so we were able to do more. We launched with a fully blown Media Ministry and a laptop with looping video backgrounds.

I know a church planter who was fully funded by a major church planting organization. He moved into a new area with a salaried staff, an office, and resources galore to do numerous types of outreaches. But after a few years, when the outside support started to dry up, the church had to shut down numerous ministries and scale everything back. The church couldn’t afford all that it was doing without the outside support. It was a very challenging season for the planter. Many of the people in the fellowship felt that something was wrong with the church as things were shutting down.

But the key is that the church planter has to be realistic about what resources are available. Don’t get ahead of the Lord. Do the best you can with what the Lord has provided. No matter what, we need to cut the cloth according the measure. God wants us to be good stewards of what He has entrusted to us.

PLANTING POWER

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PLANTING POWER

“John answered, saying to all, ‘I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’”[1]—John the Baptizer speaking of Jesus

“We believe that there is an experience of the empowering of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer that is distinct and separate from the indwelling of the Spirit that takes place at conversion.”[2] – Chuck Smith

“The baptism with the Spirit was not optional for the apostles nor should it be for us.  Jesus had commissioned them to go into all the world with the gospel, but commanded them to wait in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from heaven.  Jesus saw this as absolutely essential to fulfilling their calling.  And I believe it is essential for us in the twenty-first century as well.  The Lord wants to empower us for ministry.”[3]—Brian Brodersen

Discerning whether or not Jesus has called you to church planting is essential if you’re thinking about becoming a church planter.  There is more to have than a clear sense of calling though before you step out into the adventure of church planting.  The mission of church planting is a spiritual offensive on the kingdom of darkness.  You come against powers beyond yourself on the mission field.  That reality makes it necessary for the church planter to access a power beyond himself that is even greater than that of the kingdom of darkness if he wants to survive the mission.  He needs the very power of God through the reception of the baptism with the Holy Spirit (or Spirit-filling if you like).  Only then will he even be able to begin to be truly effective in the mission of Jesus.

 

The Personal War

Jesus conveyed this message to me in a very interesting way shortly after I arrived with my family in Utah to plant Refuge Church.  Early on in the life of the church I began to experience intense opposition.  I went through a season where I dealt with a lot of physical affliction.  I came down with swine flu, shingles, successive intense and unusual chest colds, culminating with an episode of stomach flu which left me puking my guts out all day, every day, for a week.

The physical pressure I was under at that time gave way to spiritual pressure.  As things intensified bit-by-bit the enemy began to tempt me to doubt God’s call and favor on our lives as we endeavored to start a new church in enemy territory.  I was getting really frustrated and insecure in some ways.  In the heat of all this, the Lord gave me what I now know was my first truly prophetic dream.   In the dream my wife Jen and I came to a large open field that was over-run with people participating in demonic worship.  They were dancing in worship in an absolutely chaotic frenzy.  There was an intense sense of darkness in the atmosphere around us.  It was freaky!

As the dream shifted gears, suddenly Jen and I were standing before a fence overlooking the field where we had before witnessed the satanic gathering.  Now it was broad daylight and we could see the narrow cliffs lining both sides of the field stretching far out into the horizon.  Jen and I were passionately praying over the field.  We were crying out to God to take that land from the power and kingdom of darkness and possess it for the kingdom of Jesus Christ.  We prayed for Him to use us as He took the enemy’s territory for Jesus!

And then it came.  As we prayed a giant and seriously intimidating red horse emerged from the field.  The horse came charging out of the field through an open gate a few yards from where we were praying.  I braced myself as the horse reared up to trample me down and kill me.  Then perhaps the craziest thing happened; As the beast lifted up to stomp me, I grabbed it’s front legs and twisted them until the horse was forced to the ground in submission.  After it was defeated the horse vanished and we were safe.  At that moment I woke up feeling really spiritually affected as I’m sure you can imagine.

As I prayed over the vision during the next few days the Holy Spirit granted the interpretation of the dream to us.  He reminded us that the picture of a field is often symbolic in the Bible of places in the world where He intends to bring His Kingdom.[4]  He showed me that in my dream the field represented Utah, the place He had called us to be some of the instruments through which He would bring His Kingdom.  In the dream He was confirming to us that as we work and pray for the coming of the kingdom of Christ in Utah, we would experience opposition that was too great for us to overcome on our own.  The opposition we would face as we served Jesus in Utah was represented by the horse coming out of the field to stop us as we prayed.  The ending of the dream in which I twisted the horse’s arms until it was forced into submission was a word of encouragement.  It was a declaration that even though the opposition would be great, we would ultimately overcome it through a power greater than our own, the power of God the Holy Spirit!  Even in the dream I was amazed that I was overpowering this fierce animal, and knew that something had to be working with me to accomplish this.  It was the power of God.

Where the Power’s at

The word of God given to the prophet Zechariah summarizes what the Lord was telling me through that dream in regard to what would make us successful as we fought on the front lines in spiritual battle as church planters.  Our ability to be successful and push back the gates of hell in Utah would come, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.”[5]

We’ve made relying on the leading and power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the mission of Jesus through Refuge Church our relentless pursuit from the first moments we sensed Jesus was calling us to plant.  The Lord was reminding us through this dream to continue on in that mindset as we served Him in Utah.  As we’ve sought to obey Him in this we’ve seen the Holy Spirit continue to move through our local assembly of believers in powerful and undeniable ways.  It’s so exciting to watch the Spirit of God work through the people of God, for the glory of the Son of God, Jesus Christ!

 

The Need

Jesus spoke of the need for His missionaries to access the power of the Holy Spirit for their mission as much as anyone else did in the New Testament.  Consider a couple texts and their implications for the call to missionary church planting:

 

“And being assembled together with them He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’”[6]

 

These verses describe the last interaction that Jesus had with the apostles before He ascended into heaven.  This is what He wanted to leave fresh in their minds as He was sending them out into the world to continue the ministry He had started during His time on earth.  They were about to go preaching the gospel, discipling believers, healing the hurting, and church planting as the kingdom came on earth.  They were to start in Jerusalem and not stop until Jesus had a witness in every nation, even to the ends of the earth.  But they were to attempt none of this until they received the empowerment of the Holy Spirit!  Without the Holy Spirit leading and empowering every aspect of their missionary lives they would be absolutely helpless to successfully accomplish the work to which Jesus had called them.

Luke records the concern Jesus had that his men understand their need for Holy Spirit empowerment at the end of the gospel He wrote as well:

“Then He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  And you are witnesses of these things.  Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”[7]

The importance of experiencing the empowerment of the Holy Spirit for the work of church planting is clearly something that Jesus wants us to thoroughly understand.  If we think that we can be clever enough, cool enough, strong enough, strategic enough, or inspiring enough to bring people from spiritual death to life and beat back the gates of hell, we are at best naïve, biblically uniformed, prideful, and far from the heart of Jesus.  The work of God requires the power of God.  It is that simple.

As we venture out to the front lines where the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light meet in battle, which is exactly what we do when we enter into the work of church planting, we must consciously, prayerfully, dependently, and daily receive and rely on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to make our mission fruitful.  If you don’t believe that, or aren’t prepared to walk in the power of the Spirit by God’s grace, DON’T PLANT A CHURCH!

Horses Vs Tanks

          I once heard a story of a cavalry unit that charged into battle against an armored tank division.  The cavalry unit was the last resort of defense for a country not as advanced militaristically as their invaders.  I’m sure it goes without saying that the cavalry unit was utterly destroyed!  Why? They didn’t have the adequate fire-power or equipment to even come close to overpowering the enemy they faced.  I would submit to you based on the words of Jesus Christ that if we try to be victorious in church planting over the opposition we face in the demonic realm without relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, we are a billion times more foolish, and will be far more fruitless than that cavalry unit ended up being as they challenged that armored tank division.  In the words of brilliant theologian, captain Kirk: “We just-don’t-have-the power!”[8]

Ten days after Jesus ascended back into heaven from where He came, the disciples did in fact experience the promised empowerment of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.  As they prayed in the upper room the Holy Spirit came upon them in power.  He manifested His power through them first by enabling them to worship God in languages unknown to them,[9] and later through the powerful preaching[10] of the gospel through which 3,000 people became born again.[11]  Since that time, all followers of the biblical Jesus have access to the empowerment and various gifts of the Holy Spirit[12] which He distributes according to His will as we seek and desire them.[13]

Summary and Exhortation

As believers, pastors, elders, and church planters, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit is an absolute must in our lives!  If you’re not seeking the power, don’t attempt the work.  If you want to experience the daily empowering of the Holy Spirit all you need to do is continually meet with Jesus in the word of God,[14] pray over the mission you’ve received from Jesus,[15] and ask to receive a fresh work of the Spirit in your life from the Father. [16]  It’s a gift.  We don’t have to beg for it; just receive it.  May we not have dead words!  May we have powerful biblical messages to share as we preach the Bible to the church and the gospel to the world because we depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit alone for our success, just like Jesus[17] and Paul did![18]

[1] Luke 3:16 NKJV

[2] Smith, Chuck. Calvary Chapel Distinctives. Page 31.

[3] Brodersen, Brian. Essentials in Ministry. Page 27.

[4] Matthew 13:38-44

[5] Zechariah 4:6

[6] Acts 1:4-5 & 8 NKJV

[7] Luke 24:46-49 NKJV

[8] Random Numerous Star Trek Episodes, Captain Kirk

[9] Acts 2:1-4

[10] Acts 2:14-39

[11] Acts 2:41

[12] Acts 2:39

[13] 1 Corinthians 12:11 & 14:1; Ephesians 5:17-18

[14] Colossians 3:16

[15] Acts 4:31

[16] Luke 11:9-13; 1 Corinthians 14:1; Acts 9:17

[17] Luke 4:1

[18] 1 Corinthians 2:4-5

Note- The above excerpt is taken from the book “The Spirit-led Mission” by Kellen Criswell