Radicalis Individual Track: Preaching for Life Change Session 2

At Radicalis, they are having individual learning tracks. The one I am doing is on “Preaching for life change” which is lead by Tom Holladay & Kerry Shook.

I love being with other communicators. It is great to be with other people who understand the weight of preaching (and the joy) and the preparation it takes, how hard it is and how to evaluate yourselves. The stories (both good and bad) are exciting to hear and push me forward as a preacher.

Here are some thoughts from session 2:

The secret of the master communicator, Jesus

• Apply the truth to their situation (personalization)
• We need to tell stories to grab people

Why don’t we personalize it more often?

• We assume people will make the necessary connection
• We “leave it to the Holy Spirit”
• Personal application is convicting and makes people uncomfortable
• Because we haven’t applied it in our own lives (By not preaching on life change, as a preacher, I don’t have to think about my own life)
• Because it takes more time and effort in preparation
• We are afraid of being simplistic
• We’ve never been taught how to do it
• We haven’t realized the importance of it

The danger of teaching information without application

• Knowledge without application produces pride (1 Corinthians 8:1)
• Knowledge without application brings judgment (James 4:17)

How much of a sermon should be application and information?

• Romans – 50% application
• Ephesians – 50% application
• Galatians – 100% application
• James – 80% application
• 1 Peter – 60% application
• Sermon on the mount – 90% application

Becoming a purpose driven preacher

• Our marching orders are the great commission (Matthew 28:19 – 20)
• The goal of purpose driven preaching is obedience
• Without obeying God’s word, there is no life change
• Being a purpose driven preacher means living a humble life that honors Christ
• The result of purpose driven preaching is a disciple
• Jesus always expected people to do something as a result of his preaching (John 13:17, 14:23 – 24; Matthew 7:21, 26, 12:50; Luke 10:37, 11:28)
• All NT preachers emphasized conduct
• You only really believe the parts of the Bible that you do
• Every message comes down to 2 words, “Will you?”

How to C.R.A.F.T. a message

• 2 Timothy 2:15
• The labels for preaching are futile
• “Expository preaching is when the message is centered around explaining and applying the Bible for life change.” – Tom Holladay

The Biblical method of wise preachers (Ecclesiastes 12:9 – 11)

• Two results of this kind of preaching: 1) it spurs people to action, it motivates them to do something, 2) people will remember it, firmly embedded, driven deep.
• The best crafted points in a sermon are action steps
• To craft a message, you have to identify your audience (who am I speaking to, what are their needs) and then clarify your purpose (what does God want me to say to them)

The C in C.R.A.F.T. stands for collect & categorize

• The first thing I collect is Bible verses
• Always check the context
• Develop the habit of memorizing Bible verses
• Make a list of all the words related to your subject
• Use concordances to discover all that God has said about the subject
• Collect quotes, articles, books, testimonies, illustrations, current events
• Sermons:  What have other men of God said about this?
• Read constantly
• Take advantage of the internet for ideas and research
• Recruit a volunteer research team

Radicalis Individual Track: Preaching for Life Change Session 1

At Radicalis, they are having individual learning tracks. The one I am doing is on “Preaching for life change” which is lead by Tom Holladay & Kerry Shook.

I love being with other communicators. It is great to be with other people who understand the weight of preaching (and the joy) and the preparation it takes, how hard it is and how to evaluate yourselves. The stories (both good and bad) are exciting to hear and push me forward as a preacher.

Here are some thoughts from the first day:

• To be a great communicator, you need to speak from your life, from your heart, from who you are
• Be you
• Proverbs 19:21
• One of the great problems in our church’s today is purposeless preaching
• If there is a mist in the pulpit, there is a fog in the pew
• Romans 8:29

To understand preaching, we have to understand God’s purpose for man.

• God’s purpose is to make us like Christ
• Genesis 1:26
• To be like Christ means…to think like Jesus (Phil 2:5), feel like Jesus (Col. 3:15), act like Jesus (Col. 3:17)
• Preaching should develop Christlike convictions, Christlike character and Christlike conduct
• God makes us like Jesus through circumstances
• Romans 8:28 – 29
• When you pray for patience, God will use every circumstance and opportunity to provide you with opportunities to learn patience
• God makes us like Jesus through applying His word to my life
• 1 John 3:2
• Keep eternity in mind when it comes to not only living, but also preaching
• 2 Corinthians 3:18 (that mirror is God’s word)
• James 1:24 – 25
• When we get people to look at, remember, and do God’s Word, they are inevitably changed
• The problem is not in God’s Word, the problem is transformational preaching is not in our people either, it is in our preaching
• “Never before in the history of the USA has the gospel of Jesus Christ made such inroads while at the same time making so little difference in how people actually live.” – George Gallup

To understand preaching, we have to understand God’s purpose for His Word.

• We are chosen by the God of the universe to hold His word in our hands and teach it
• Your understanding of God’s purpose for the Bible will affect how you preach it
• 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17
• The purpose of the Bible is life change
• To change our character and our conduct
• “The word of God is not to teach us to prattle or be eloquent and subtle…It is to reform our lives, so that we desire to serve God, to give ourselves entirely to him, and to conform ourselves to his good will.” – John Calvin
• The Bible is not a history book, it is a manual for life
• The primary purpose of preaching is life change, any other purpose is a secondary purpose to that
• If I intend to be a biblical preacher, my messages must always be life oriented not information oriented
• One of the problems in churches is we know enough of the word
• The world we live in would like to see a sermon lived out
• “Lord, help us teach this message the way you want it to be taught, to change lives”

We need to understand God’s purpose for preaching.

• Preaching for information is easier to do
• You can’t just interpret the text, you have to go past that
• Ephesians 4:11 – 13
• The purpose of preaching is to become more like Jesus Christ, which is the purpose of the Bible and the purpose of man
• There is both a personal and a corporate purpose in preaching and teaching
• “What happens if YOU do this?” and “What happens if WE do this?”
• The pulpit in many ways is the rudder that drives the whole church
• 1 Timothy 1:5 – 6 (Preaching is not the time to argue about foolishness)
• God’s purpose for preaching is life change
• How does that happen? Through application
• The #1 problem of preaching in America is the lack of application
• The result of preaching without application is nothing happens, our churches are dead, finances dwindle, excitement goes away and lives aren’t changed
• We are called by God to share God’s Word in a way that changes lives
• Isaiah 55:11

To be a good preacher that faithfully preachers God’s word, we need to understand God’s purpose for the preacher.

• There is no job quite like being a preacher, it is emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally taxing
• We are to be bridge builders
• We build bridges to help people come to Jesus by bridging the ancient text with their contemporary needs
• Application brings them together
• The challenge of preaching is to declare eternal truths that never change and apply them in a world that is always changing
• We don’t make the Bible relevant, the Bible has always been relevant (the problem is that our delivery irrelevant)
• “If you preach the gospel in all aspects with the exception of the issues which deal specifically with your times – you are not preaching all the gospel.” – Martin Luther
• Characteristics of bridge building (study the text, what are the timeless truths, think of your audience)
• 6 things you need to know about the people who come to your church:  everybody wants to be loved, everybody wants their lives to count, no matter how wealthy or successful life is empty without Christ, many of these people are carrying a load of guilt, many are consumed with bitterness over a past hurt, there is a universal fear of death.

Radicalis Session 2b: Radical Preaching (Andy Stanley)

Session 2 at Radicalis also had a sermon from Andy Stanley on preaching. If you haven’t picked up his book on preaching, you need to. Totally changed the way I preach.

Here are some thoughts from his session:

• If we are not careful, our approach to preaching will trump our goal in preaching
• People in our country abandon churches today because they went to one
• In marriage, approach is everything, it’s the same with preaching
• Having the right goal is not contingent on being right, it’s contingent on approach
• Andy Stanley’s goal for preaching is “for people to live their lives as if God is with them”
• My goal in preaching, must shape my approach
• What is your goal when you preach?
• I want to lure people into the Scripture and rub their noses in it, take one sticky statement and jam down into their heart and then send them out
• What is your approach?
• Five questions Andy Stanley asks each week when he preaches (in bold)
• Who is this about…really?
• As long as the preaching is about me, I will fail in my approach to draw people in and give them something to do when they go out
• The pressure we feel is “What am I going to say” instead of “Who will be there and what do they need to hear”
• If someone I care about said to me, “I’m coming to your church one more time and if something doesn’t happen, I’m not coming back”
• The way you get over you, is you get so thoroughly prepared that you don’t even have to think hard about what you are doing
• What’s my burden?
• This the one thing you have to say and you will die if you don’t get to say it
• Dig it til you find it
• Build everything around it
• Make it stick
• If you only had 1 minute, what would you say?
• To understand why, submit and apply.
• What is the 1 thing that you have to say?
• Where’s the tension?
• If there is no tension, no one will pay attention
• What is the question this message answers?
• What is the tension this message resolves?
• What is the mystery this message solves?
• What is the issue this message addresses?
• For people to do something, they must be interested, they won’t be interested if there is no tension
• Do I own this? Have I internalized this message?
• If you don’t own it, it won’t flow
• The best way to internalize the talk is to memorize pieces, not points
• We don’t preach point, we only have 1 point
• If you can think through the pieces, you don’t need notes
• Our minds don’t work in points
• Am I allowing the text to speak?
• Bring your energy to the text
• You need to uncover the energy in the text
• Don’t spend all your energy on your cool stories
• If you are afraid of losing people’s interest in the Bible, you aren’t prepared

This was a great session. So many things to chew on. If this session was the only session I came to so far, it would have been worth the trip (and the money).

Radicalis Session 2: Radical Preaching (Rick Warren)

Session 2 of Radicalis was Rick Warren and Andy Stanley and the topic was Radical Preaching.

This session made me incredibly excited for the learning track I’m in on “Preaching for life change.” His princples for preaching are in bold.

Here are some notes from Rick’s part:

• What do we do when God’s word seems to be returning void? It isn’t the message, it has to do with the way we are delivering it.
• The basis for radical preaching is the great commission
• The goal of radical preaching is obedience
• It is not enough to know the word of God
• The more knowledge you have, actually increases your judgment
• Knowing the word of God is not the same thing as doers
• Teach them to obey
• 2 Timothy 3: The purpose of the Bible is action
• The result of radical preaching is a serving disciple
• Our problem is we are teaching too much, because people tend to think that when they hear it they know it
• We don’t give people enough time to do what we tell them to do
• It is not enough to apply it personally, you also have to answer the question, “What does this mean to us as a church?”
• Preaching should lead to action, obedience, practice
• Jesus and every NT preacher preached for action
• You only believe the parts of the Bible you do
• Titus 2:1
• Radical preaching is preaching for a response
• Preacher’s need to pray “Lord, who is coming and what do I need to say?”
• Preaching needs to answer the “why question” but also the “how question”
• All behavior is based on a belief
• What you believe affects how you behave
• If you want to change how people act, change what they believe
• Behind every sin is a lie I am believing
• When you sin, at that moment you are doing what you believe is the best thing you could do
• When you look at your congregation, you can see their behavior, preaching needs to figure out the lie beneath the behavior and then preach on that
• Change always starts in the mind
• Romans 12:2
• To help people change, we must first change their beliefs
• Why do I do something? Why do I not do something?
• Trying to change people’s behavior without changing their beliefs is wrong, backwards
• The auto pilot in your life is your belief system, it is why you are not able to change
• You cannot just change behavior, you must change the mindset
• It is not hard to obey when your mind is renewed
• If you want to see lives changed, you must get to the root of their sin
• Maturity is not always doing what you feel like doing
• The Bible term for “changing your mind” is repentance
• Repentance doesn’t mean stop doing bad things, it means, to change your mind
• Most preaching is about changing what you do, when it needs to be about changing how we think something
• It’s a paradigm shift
• Ezekiel 36:26
• You don’t change people’s minds, the applied word of God does
• Zechariah 4:6
• 2 Corinthians 10:4 – 5 (Capture every thought and make it give up)
• The goal of preaching is life application and obedience
• Changing the way I act is the fruit of repentance
• Matthew 3:8
• Deeds are the proof of repentance
• The deepest preaching is preaching for repentance
• Life application preaching is not shallow preaching
• Shallow is preaching doctrine without applying it to life change, the sins of your people and the things that need changing
• Matthew 3:2
• Mark 1:15, 4:17, 6:12
• Acts 2:38
• Repentance is our fundamental message, changing from this thought to that thought
• To produce lasting life change, you must enlighten the mind, engage the emotions and challenge the will
• There is an element of feeling, thinking and doing in radical preaching
• You have to encourage, challenge, build up and send them out in your sermons
• Hold up, build up, fire up
• Most preachers are afraid to stand up and call people out and challenge them
• Every sermon comes down to 2 words, “Will you?”

This was a great session, can’t wait for the learning track I’m doing on preaching!

Radicalis Session 1b: Radical Devotion (Perry Noble)

Perry Noble was sandwiched between Rick Warren and Andy Stanley. He preached in session 1b of Radicalis.

He preached on “Radical Devotion” from Acts 26. This was exactly what I needed to hear about pushing through hell as a pastor to make an impact for heaven.

• Pastors need to do a devotion check to see how radically devoted we are to Jesus because what seems huge and can overtake us, really can’t
• Radical devotion begins with an accurate view of Jesus
• We wouldn’t speak to Jesus the way we do if we understood who He was
• Before we can discover what God wants, we have to understand who He is
• We have a Jesus problem in the church
• Radical devotion calls us to action
• We too often try to pray the situation away instead of acting
• When the alarm goes off, you can’t pretend the alarm isn’t going off
• Jesus didn’t know show us who He is, so we can sit around and do nothing
• We need to spend less time telling God what He can’t do
• Vision calls us to action
• Sometimes that action is very, very uncomfortable
• Leaders need to seek comfort less
• Too many pastors want to be more like Jesus but they don’t want it to hurt
• If people aren’t leaving, you aren’t leading
• The church is a body and every body needs to be cleaned
• Radical devotion will impact me personally
• It seems that whenever a pastor went through a tough time at his church, God always called him to another church (doesn’t make any sense)
• Paul was called to be a servant and a witness
• You can tell how much God is getting ready to do by how much pain you as a pastor are going through
• Hell will not run me off from this church
• You have to see the vision (lead out of revelation and not imitation) and you’ve got to feel it
• Radical devotion will lead to the supernatural
• When you talk about the supernatural in the church, they get scared
• The church has become way more dependant on the strategic that we have forgotten the Spirit
• There is not a formula that will grow your church
• Beg God for his intervention

Radicalis Session 1: Radical Devotion (Rick Warren)

Session 1 of Radicalis was started off by worship led by Phil Wickham  (which was awesome) and then Rick Warren preached on Radical Devotion. He started off by asking if we want to be a mushroom or an oak tree? An oak tree takes 60 years to grow.

Here are a few thoughts:

• A healthy church takes time, just like an oak tree
• For every book of servanthood, there is a thousand on leadership
• Everyone wants to be a leader, no one wants to be a servant
• God isn’t looking for servant leaders, he is looking for servants
• There are 2 visible symptons of rootlessness today:  Christians are lethargic, Non – Christians don’t want what we offer
• Most Christians are spiritual zombies, they are the walking dead, mindlessly going through the motions of church without even thinking about it
• Most Americans have a horrible opinion of Christians
• Meaning, we have not done a very good job of representing Christ
• The word Radical comes the Latin “Radicalis” which literally means “from the root”
• Radical does not mean excessive
• What you are in private, determines who you lead in public
• No roots, no fruits
• All the main sessions are about building spiritual roots in different areas of your church
• Colossians 2:6 – 7 (obedience and roots are the key words)
• A radical is rooted in Christ, rooted in his word, rooted in his love
• Healthy is the goal, not size
• Being a strong, healthy church is the goal of every church
• Ephesians 3:17 – 19
• Too many churches and leaders have no power
• Most people don’t have productive lives or ministry because they don’t have deep roots
• You don’t get credit for starting the race, you get credit to ending it well
• Jeremiah 17:7 – 8
• When you have deep roots…you are not bothered by the heat, you can handle pressure
• When you have deep roots…they are not worried by the drought, when things dry up in your life
• You know if a person or a church has root when you see fruit
• If you get the great commandment and the great commission right, you’ll do alright in life
• Radical devotion is loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength
• You can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving
• The world is looking for an authoritative message through a humble messenger
• Authority comes from humility
• 2 Kings 19:30
• Colossians 2:7
• You have not because you ask not
• Matthew 22:34 – 40
• Radical devotion is giving everything to God for Him to use you
• It’s all worship
• Music is not a synonym for worship
• Your music says more about your culture than your theology
• Worship is far more than music, it’s radical devotion
• Hosea 6:6 (Love and know are the two most important things in life, especially when it comes to God)
• God’s love is unconditional, it is not based on what you do, but based on who He is and what He’s done
• Everything is rooted in God’s love for you
• If you are going to have God’s power in your ministry, you have to fall in love with Jesus again
• Revelation 2:2 – 5
• People fall out of love because they stop doing what they did at first
• We stop loving God because we replace God with idols in our lives
• There are 3 idols (lust of the flesh – passions/feelings, lust of the eyes – possessions, pride of life – position)
• The church’s problem is we hate the people of the world and love the values of the world
• Sex, salary and status are pastor’s biggest temtpations
• You will be tempted as a pastor to use the abilities God has given you to feed yourself and self worth
• We are more likely to be tempted in our area of strength instead of our area of weakness

Handling Criticism & Opposition

Saturday night, I preached on handling adversity, criticism and opposition from Nehemiah 4:1 – 14. This topic is all over the book of Nehemiah and it is something every leader experiences, a lot.

The reality is criticism and opposition is inevitable if you do anything great for God. No one in the Bible or church history did something great for God and escaped opposition. People oppose people who great things. When you do something great for God, you are pushing the status quo, you are also making other people realize what they have not done with their lives. So people criticize. It is easier to criticize than actually do something with your life.

But if it is inevitable, how do you handle it? Too often, criticism derails not only our lives, but also churches. The list of what our critics have said about me and our church since starting is endless. But criticism will either stop God from using you or make you strong enough to get through what is ahead.

In churches, conversations go like this:

“I’ve heard from a lot of people about how upset everyone is about what we are doing or the direction we are going.”

“Well, who is upset because I’d like to talk with them?”

“Well, I told them I wouldn’t say their names.”

Which means, you are talking to the only person who is upset. The problem is that too many of us and too many pastors allow that one person to dictate our lives.

If you are in leadership, you are going to make someone mad. It is a matter of when, not if. Someone will not like how you preach, what your mission is, how loud the music is, that you do small groups, that you are a simple church, that you are missional. Pick something and you will find someone who doesn’t like it. Pick something else and you will find a different person who is mad.

If you are a leader, get used to it.

The difference between people with a dream and visionaries is the visionary took their dream, went through opposition and found a vision worth giving their life for.

That’s what Nehemiah did.

He had a dream, that became a vision. A vision is something you would give up everything to accomplish. To make it through opposition, this is what you need to have.

Nehemiah experienced critics, opposition, discouragement, from both outside the building project and from within the building project. Opposition will come from all sides. He heard it, he gave it over to God, he ignored them and got back to work. He dealt with it, but he never engaged them. This is incredible to me. He didn’t try to reason with them, ask for their side, try to make things better. He prayed one of the most honest prayers in the Bible (4:4 – 5) and then got back to work.

Want to make your critics mad? Get back to work. Do what they are mad about.

The reality is, critics don’t say anything new. They just give voice to your deepest fears.

So, since criticism is inevitable if you are going to do anything great for God. Give it over to God and get back to work. Don’t let it stop you. Don’t let it derail you.

The mission is too big, and our God is too big to pay attention.

Heading West to Radicalis

This morning, Katie, Paul, Jennifer and myself are getting in the car and trekking to California. We’re going to the Radicalis Conference at Saddleback Church. I am really, really excited about this week and what it holds.

One of the things I am really excited about are the individual tracks they have. Katie is doing the Pastor’s wife track with Kay Warren and Chris Shook, and I am doing the preaching track with Rick Warren and Tom Holladay.

In addition to all of this, some of the main session speakers are Rick Warren, Mark Driscoll, Perry Noble, Andy Stanley, Kerry Shook, Dino Rizzo, and Ed Stetzer.

Watch the blog throughout the week as I will be live blogging my notes for all of the sessions. You can also follow all of the action for the week either through twitter or facebook.

We’d appreciate your prayers as we travel, being away from our kids (we have never left all three kids before), that it would be a great time of learning, community, growing and refreshing. We’ll be back Friday and ready to rock and roll this Saturday night at Revolution (You don’t want to miss this week at Revolution, we have some awesome things planned).

Saturday Night Mind Dump…

• Love my church
• Talked about how to handle adversity, opposition and criticism tonight from Nehemiah 4:1 – 14
• Great passage, great example of not only how to be a leader in the midst of adversity and opposition, but how to handle that personally
• Nehemiah heard the criticism, prayed about it and then got back to work
• No one does anything great in their life or for God without experiencing some opposition and criticism
• It is part of the journey
• If you missed tonight, you can listen to it here
• Love having 2nd and 3rd time guests introduce their friends that they brought with them
• So much energy comes by investing and inviting in our friends
• Humbled by how many people God is entrusting us with
• Heading to California for a conference this week with Katie, Paul and Jennifer
• Really excited about the time away
• I’ll be live blogging the main sessions and then I’m doing the preaching track with Rick Warren, so I’ll be sharing my notes from that
• Can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to have no kids and all the information I’m going to get this week
• Wow
• Katie and I are talking about maybe going to Disneyland one night
• I’ve never been before
• Love this picture of our kids
• Someone told me I looked mad tonight
• For me, I get so frustrated when people mail in their dreams because of adversity and I get so mad when churches are derailed because leaders don’t stand up to opposition and criticism
• Remember, when someone comes to you says, “They are mad,” you are talking to “they”
• “They” is always 1 person
• This might be one of the best leadership books I’ve read in a long time
• So excited about the Rev Up meeting next week
• I can’t wait to see how this ministry is able to affect the lives of students and their families
• Cody is a great young leader that is going to do huge stuff for God at Revolution
• Spent a good bit of time this week laying out what Revolution’s system will be to help new believers get connected at Revolution and take the next step in their journey
• Really excited about having this planned out so we are better able to help people in their journey
• If you haven’t signed up to be baptized on the 20th and would like to be, please email Christe LePeau
• Pretty excited about the super bowl tomorrow
• Without a horse in the game, I’m just hoping for a good game
• I think the Colts will win, but it will be close
• And high scoring
• I have been working through this question posed to me by my spiritual director last week, “Do you enjoy success?”
• Trying to learn how to be more present in the moment of what God is doing and enjoying what He is doing in my life
• Excited about next week and being able to talk about how you defend what God has given you, whether it is your own life (spiritual and physical), relationships, family, ministry, church or job
• This is incredibly important, not only to our church, but also as individuals
• Too often, we let our protection happen by chance
• It’s going to be a powerful night
• Lots of props, which is always fun

Links of the Week

1. Perry Noble on How to get buy in from your staff part 1 and part 2.
2. Why Tim Tebow’s super bowl ad is a good thing. (From the perspective of a pro-choice journalist). This is a great article.
3. Meet Acts 29 church planter Jared Ayers. I went to college with Jared and his dad did our wedding. Awesome to hear how things are going and how God is using them in Philadelphia.
4. C.J. Mahaney on How Dad’s can proactively watch the super bowl. Great insights into how to protect your family, enjoy the game and how to use the game as a launching point with your kids.

Foto Friday

For Christmas this year, I got a new camera. When I was high school, I took some photography classes and loved it. Now that we have kids we decided we needed to do a better job of chronicling their lives and having more pictures. So, we got the camera.

I decided to start Foto Friday here on the blog. The plan is, each week, I’ll share some pictures of life in our family and what is happening in our world.

Do You Enjoy Success?

One of the things I started doing before Revolution started was meeting with a spiritual director. As a pastor and communicator, a big part of my job is helping others with their spiritual journey, answering questions, giving guidance and helping people see where God is working in their lives. I love this about my job. The problem I ran into was I needed someone to help me with that.

Last week, during my monthly session, I was sharing about the weight of pastoring. It is hard to describe the weight a pastor carries. While all jobs have weights, for me I feel the financial, spiritual, relational, emotional weight, as well as the calling that is on my life for this job.

As I was describing this and all the things God has done in the last few months at Revolution (which have been amazing and God has done some unbelievable things at our church) she asked me, “How do you handle success?”

It stopped me in my tracks.

She went on, “Do you ever just sit and bathe in what God is doing, what God has done? Or, are you so focused on the next thing, looking for the next problem that you miss what God is doing?”

As a church planter, it is bred in us to be a fighter. It takes a fighter to make it, church planting is not for the faint of heart. You also don’t want to have the idea that you have arrived or made it as a church. You don’t want to be prideful or think God is moving because of you.

I left thinking, “Am I allowed to enjoy what God is doing?”

The answer is yes. A resounding yes.

So, now I’m celebrating more. I’m bathing in what God is doing. I’m trying to be more present to enjoy what God is doing around me, in me and through me.

So, leaders. Do you enjoy success? Do you enjoy when God moves and he uses you, or, are you off to the next thing, looking for the next fire to put out, the next problem to solve?

I am enjoying God moving and using me. I am enjoying God’s success.

This Weekend: Pain & Progress

Saturday is part 5 of our series on the book of Nehemiah. This has been one of the most eye opening series I have ever preached and by far, the most interesting series we have done at Revolution.

Saturday is not going to be any different.

We will be looking pain, adversity, discouragement and how to handle them. Does being a Christian mean that your life is free of these things or does it get worse? In the midst of these feelings and situations, does prayer work or is that a cop out for weak people?

It is going to be a great night. All our volunteers are back on and the band is coming back with a bang.

This is a great weekend to invite that friend you have been investing with recently. An easy to do that is with our e-invite, found here.

What the Church Can Do

“Broken relationships, broken families, broken promises, broken values, broken hearts, broken lives in a broken-down world…

In the midst of this mess, allow the local church to function as the church envisioned by Jesus Christ – a thriving, radiating center of Christian love reaching out in self-sacrificing concern toward the needs of contemporary women, men and children. Let the church really be the church and watch it exert a supernatural power of attraction that will irresistibly draw our secular, community-starved contemporaries within its sphere of influence, bring them to Christ in the most natural manner, and integrate them into its life.

The best shot at evangelism is to encourage churches to become and to live as authentic, biblically defined communities so that the Lord himself can become their Master Evangelist.” – Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian

What You Can Control

I was reading Exodus 18 – 20 this morning. It is the classic passage on delegation. Whenever you go to a pastor’s conference, someone is bound to use this passage to show how to delegate. The example of Moses doing everything for the Israelites and not handing things off, for a number of reasons, is something every pastor and leader can relate to.

Jethro (Moses’ Father in law) watches as all the people line up to let Moses answer their questions and make decisions for them. Jethro asks him, “Why are you doing this? All by yourself?”

Moses answers, “Because the people come to me with questions about God. When something comes up, they come to me.”

Now, it is easy to look at this and think, but Moses is wise. Maybe Moses was the best person to do this, the best person to answer all their questions. But Moses also kept other people from being involved. By doing this, he was really being selfish by not allowing others to help and he was setting up a system that made it that only he could answer people’s questions.

One of the things that many pastors struggle with is letting go of things. Letting go of control and letting other leaders step up. Not being in every meeting, every conversation, every decision. This makes the pastor the bottleneck of the church. It keeps the church from being healthy and effective, and it keeps highly talented leaders from doing what God created them to do.

Once in my coaching network, Nelson made the comment that there are two reasons churches do not break through the 65 and 125 barrier (these are considered the two hardest growth barriers for a church to breakthrough). They are connected:  either the pastor will not give up control and delegate to other leaders, or the church won’t let him.

At Revolution, we are entering this stage. We prepared for it by raising up leaders and passing things off to them before we needed to. We have always tried to be ahead of growth and staff and prepare for it instead of reacting to it. I shared on Saturday night that right now, you don’t have to talk to me to get involved and connected at Revolution. That is awesome.

We are trying to remove the barriers to breaking through 125 before we have them. This is exciting and scary for me as the lead pastor. Giving anything away as a person is difficult, but when you start a church or business, it is hard to let others care as much as you do. Even though they do, it is still hard.

I was reminded Saturday night how many people in our church care about Revolution and how much effort everyone puts in to make it happen. As a leader, I am humbled by this.

In a growing church, the lead pastor must let go of control to high capacity leaders. They must let leaders do what God created them to do. It is a win-win situation.

A leader must learn to control what they can control. A leader can control what they give away and how they do when they give it away.