Leadership Comm. 6

Hey Leaders,

It's been an amazing period in the life of the church, there are so many places where I am seeing God at work and so many lives that I am seeing changed, challenged and renewed by God through his Holy Spirit – there is a great excitement in me and I hope you are sensing this move of God as well.

I am energized about what God is doing through all of you in our ministries – our church has a great team of you that makes all of this happen for Jesus glory. Sunday was a great example: Worship was excellently led and spirit filled with a great team of muso's and singers, a bunch of people made a whole lot of things happen behind the scenes. Our kids church is flourishing under good leadership and strong teaching and there was fellowship and community afterwards around tea. Add to that three homegroups that are starting up and people who are praying for the church and all of this just really gets my blood pumping! Thanks to Jesus!

By now you should all know our vision/mission statement:

'Inside, outside and all around'

Discipling the faithful INSIDE the church to be and to act like Jesus

Reaching the lost OUTSIDE the church with the message of Jesus

Serving the community AROUND the church with the love of Jesus

 

This is from Matthew 28 and Acts 1:8 and reminds us of WHAT we need to do, whenever you are doing some ministry you need to ask yourself am I aiming for one of these three goals? If it's not meeting one of those three goals, why are you doing it?

I'd like to add to this a set of core values that tells us HOW we would do this, let me tell you why: When I was training for the ministry a friend and mentor who is much wiser and brighter than me said when he was young he believed content was everything as long as he preached good theology people would believe and be changed by Jesus. As he got older he realized more and more than form is as important – if you are not accessible people will never hear the good content. He realized that there is always the danger of heading too far and being very funny or easy to listen to but not having any content (think TV preachers here).

The point is that there needs to be a WAY in which we do things – an ethos or a code if you like. And I'd like to hear some suggestions from you as to what you would think is important. So let me throw my two into the pot to get you thinking:

1.       Relevant – to meet people where they are at so that they might meet the living savior Jesus

2.       Authentic – no plastic, cheesy or fake people here – just a bunch of real Christians working together in all of life for Jesus fame!

3.       ????

My aim is a short list of core values that we can use to give a specific flavour when we do any ministry in the church, let me give you some examples of how this would flavour things using only the two I have given:

·         I'm preparing a home group lesson how do I make it relevant for my group and how can I be authentic in how this truth about Jesus has affected my own life? Instead of presenting material that I don't really care about in a way that will not connect with the people in my group with Jesus

·         I'm counselling somebody – how do I give them a real and relevant answer and not a "out-of-the-book" pithy statement and how might I be authentic and share my own struggles with this issue, to Jesus'  glory

·         I'm leading worship – how do I pray in a way that is authentic and relevant and not use out-of-date language so that people would see the reality of my relationship with Jesus and worship him because of it instead of a prayer that is complicated to follow and is meaningless to the church

·         I'm leading a group of children – what things are they facing to which Jesus is the answer and how do I teach them without hiding some of the awkward paradoxes of the way that God works instead of preparing some irrelevant and corny material that presents a bogus view of God.

I'd like you to throw some ideas out there. When you post replies do a reply to all and add your item in at the bottom of the list – let's see what God is saying to the church. So give this some thought!

Let me remind you that all of this is on a blog. I'd love for you to drop comments and replies there.  Our new website is getting up to speed and the blog will link off there. Let's use this online tool to create discussion around these things.

A reminder of Ascension day service on Thursday 7:00pm – I hope to see you there.

Finally here is a brilliant and I meant BRILLIANT sermon by Francis Chan – very challenging for all of us

Grace and peace!

Brent