Called to the Ministry?

We are a month away from Servolution and there is a huge buzz right now not only in Auckland but Sydney and Brisbane as well. Thank you to all the pastors and the churches who are partnering together to share the love of Christ through simple acts of kindness.

This morning I was meditating on the fact that we are ALL called to the Ministry. To Serve People and to Share Christ. The Great Commission and the Great Commandment. ‘Ministry’ is not a special career for the clergy. It is a calling for all those who follow Jesus Christ. We are all called to minister not just the paid clergy.

Someone asked me the other day “when did you accept the call to the ministry”. I did say 9 years ago. But thinking about what I said back then, was wrong. I accepted the call to minister the day I gave my heart to Christ, which was the day I decided to follow him, 25 years ago.

‘Minister’ is not title, nor a position. It is a function. (my conviction)

Ministry is what ALL Christ followers do. There should be no ‘professional ministers’ in the Body of Christ. some are called specifically to equip he ministers (Eph 4), that does not make them professionals. If people are not ministering under their equipping ministry then they are not doing the ministry of equipping.

As a pastor I need to be careful not to act, talk and preach in such a way that sends a wrong message that I’m the “Super Pastor”, who is ever present in time of trouble, always counseling, always praying for people, making every decision, etc…….. ( try to do those every now and then).

Jesus trained the 12 to minister and then sent them. He did the same with the 70.

So are you called to the ministry? If you say you are a follower of Christ then know this……YOU ARE CALLED?

No one is going to ordain you to witness and share the love of Christ. You are called to the office, the factory, the school ….etc……where you work!!! you are called to the sports club that you are part of, you are called to the business and the clients you are part of……..

Thank you for obeying the call of Christ, to serve, to feed, to care, to love, clothe, to visit, to pray, to comfort…. ………

In Servolution Language; thank you for washing cars, giving out water bottles, mow lawns, giving out flowers, renovate schools, giving out food parcels, weeding gardens, baking cakes, picking up rubbish, painting out grafitti, etc………..

At LifeChurch, we say, “Every member is a Minister”. My wife and I are the pastors but everyone is a minister.

Get Real!

Following Pastor Andy Forsgren’s sermon on Sunday, here is a practical exercise to help you take inventory of your spiritual life. Take the challenge and rate yourself and see how authentic you are in these disciplines.

These areas are vitally important in our spiritual growth. After rating yourself, make a list of all the 1′s and the 2′s and start tackling them one by one. Find an accountability partner and ask him/her to help you, move from 1 or 2 to 3.  Its called discipleship. An accountability partner will add fuel to the process. Do it together.  You can be his or her accountability partner too. Have fun!. It is not meant to be a judging session.

Admission is the first step to freedom in God. Don’t let that 1 or 2 hold you back from reaching your potential in God.

Rate yourself   1 – Need a lot of work,  2 – average   3 – Good

•1) Money:

• Are you a good steward of what God has given you?
• Are you in debt? How bad?
• Are you giving to God through tithes and offerings?
• Are you giving to others in need?

•2) Moral:

• Are you morally pure?
• Are you having sex outside of marriage?
• Are you in an adulterous relationship?
• Are you messing with pornography?
• Websites you visit?
• Email & Text messages. ?

•3) Prayer

• When was the last time you prayed?
• Do you pray only when you are desperate or do you pray regularly?
• Do you pray for other people?

•4) Word of God

• Do you read the Bible every day?
• Do you study the scriptures?
• Is it the final authority?
• Do you practice its contents?

•5) Devotional Time

How often do you have devotional time?

Is it a 1 minute, 5 minutes or longer?

•6) Witnessing

• How often do you talk to people about God?
• Have you shared your testimony of how you came to the Lord with someone?
• Have you led someone to the Lord recently?

•7) Fellowship

• How often do you fellowship with other christians?
• How often do you attend life group?

•8) Worship

• How regular is your attendance on Sunday services?
• Do you consider yourself a passionate or a passive worshipper?

•9) Serve

• Are you using your gifts and talents for the good of others?
• How much of your time is dedicated to voluntary work?

•10) Family

• How much time is set aside for spouse and children?
• Are you a Violent and Abusive person at home?
• Do you model the love of Christ at home?
• Do you teach one thing and practice the opposite?
• Do you practice hospitality often?

I encourage you to do this together with your spouse or a close friend. Then pray together after!

Volunteers Appreciation Night

 VOLUNTEERS: They are the greatest asset of any church. They are my heroes. These are the people who throw in their heart and soul to the mission and vision of the church. They sacrificially give their time, energy, money, and talents for the benefit of others. They serve with joy, faithfulness, and commitment. They have a team spirit with a ‘we can do it attitude’. Though having different gifts, our volunteers are of equal value, united around a common purpose. They have an “all for one, one for all” heart.

My wife and I have been so blessed to be part of a great team at LifeChurch. (I know I have said this before in many other posts. The truth is I am biased) We have achieved a lot this year because of their unwavering support and trust.

This coming weekend we are celebrating together. It is still a mystery to them what we are doing or where we are going (I think) but I am so looking forward to it.

If you’ve volunteered at LifeChurch in the past year, then you’re invited! (Seriously, you should receive an invitation in the mail / email by now. If you don’t, and you should, please give Jeanie a call at the Office (09 262 2754), because it probably means we have an old or incorrect address for you.)
We don’t want you miss out. I promise that you will enjoy the night. It is a 7 hour event so make sure the babysitter is organized.

How many churches do we need?

I facilitate the ministers fraternal in our community of Manurewa and I have been talking to a lot of pastors over the last 15 months, trying to connect and build relationships and see what we can do together as the Body of Christ in Manurewa. Its been a very interesting task. Some have welcomed me and the idea of networking with open arms some are not quite keen at all. Some sat on the fence for a while and now finally decided to join us. Praise God!! Acccording to my last count there are 71 Christian Churches in our community. Next year there will be 3 more new church plants in Manurewa. Talking to one of the ministers this year he commented ‘great to have you here in Manurewa, the more the merrier’. I remember saying yes to him but now I am asking myself do we really need 71 churches in Manurewa. Is it really true theat ‘the more the merrier’. 

Some ministers may not like this but I am starting to think that if we have a lot of  churches in an area and the physical, emotional, social and spiritual condition of the community is not changed then I don’t think ‘the more the merrier’ is the right attitude. 

The church, the body of the Christ and the hands and feet of God in this world must engage in redeeming and restoring people, the community. We are saved to do Good Works. Ephesians 2:8-10.

I am excited with the relationships already established with other churches in the area, we are able to connect, pray, share ideas and support each other. Now I think we need to move to another level of engagement!! Thy Kingdom come!!!

(Image by executableoutline.com)

Silence & Solitude

Notes from Craigs  Sermon on Sunday

• But I’m too busy to take time out to pray!
• “We live in a noisy, busy world. Silence and solitude are not twentieth-century words. They fit the era of Victorian lace, high-button shoes, and kerosene lamps better than our age of television, video arcades, and joggers wired with earphones. We have become a people with an aversion to quiet and an uneasiness with being alone” Jean Fleming

How to:

a.  Minute retreats: A spiritual pause.  looking to Christ, listening to His Spirit

b. A daily time with God:
Outward Silence and Solitude:  A time of reconnecting with God. Bble, Prayer, Private Worship

c. A few extended times of Silence and Solitude each year

d. Have special places where you can go for Silence and Solitude

Looking for the Perfect Leader Pt2

 Most Churches appoint new leaders around December / January.  Yesterday I started a 3 part series on appointing leaders:

3. Calling

Someone in your church may have all the necessary skills and experience you are looking for but his heart is not in the ministry or your church. (check his/her involvement as a volunteer). People who are called, go the extra mile over and over again because they believe that God has placed them in that ministry or in that role. Its important to ask the new leader whether he /she feels God calling him / her into the ministry as a whole not just that role.  Paul in Galatians 1:1 knew it without a shadow of doubt that he wa called by God in to the role and ministry of apostleship.

4. Chemistry

I learnt this from Bill Hybels. I don’t have any Bible verses on Chemistry but it is so crucial that the leaders have the heart of the Senior Pastor / Leader. Why is this important? Two hearts, two visions, two directions, two leaders, two agendas, eventually it will become two churches. Imagine having 2-3 people on your leadership team with their own agendas and ideas on how to run the church. Divisions are often caused by people who are in leadership, who are not called by God.  They are the ones who are always against what God has put in the heart of the Senior Leader/Pastor. To be honest if I don’t connect / click with someone, no matter how good they are in their skills and qualifications they should not be in my leadership team. I think this is common sense. Don’t get me wrong on this one. Remember ‘Birds of the same feather flock together’. You want to be leaders who are singing the same song, on the same page, going the same direction, rowing the same canoe, fighting the same battle, praying the same prayers…… These are some of my little phrases /axioms I have been saying to our church over the last 3 -4 years.

Looking for the perfect leader? Pt1

 

Good luck! I am not going to enter into the debate of whether leaders are born or made. One thing i know is that there are no perfect leaders and we all need to work hard, to become good leaders by reading, studying, training, hands on experiecne, mistakes, failurers, mentoring etc…

There are a whole lot of criterias or characteristics to look for because different situations require different leadership styles. Here are non negotiable characteristics I believe are very vital for church leadership.

1. Commitment to Christ

Is he or she actively involved in a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. Is he or she passionetly about his / her faith and not an undercover type Christian. I think it is also important to note that a new Christian may not be a wise decision. They need time to prove that their faith is aunthentic and not just a buzz!!

(1 Tim 3:6, 1 Tim 5:22)

2. Character

Read Titus 1:6-8 and 1 Tim 3:17. can’t go wrong with this. You can do something with leadership skills. There are a lot of courses to take, but if a leader has character flaws it is very difficult to fix them. Look for Christ like character. Is he / she upright, self controlled, honest, disciplined, hospitable, holy, patient? or by the way Is he / she a giver?

Do you desire to fire your pastor?

This article caught my attention. Someone emailed me this the other day. Here’s a summary of it.

• Do you desire to fire your pastor? Perhaps you should fire him/her up instead!
• Do you want to leave your church? Perhaps you should be the one to build it up!
• The best way to build your church and fire up your pastor is to be involved and pray for them constantly and continually!
• Pastors and church leaders face many opportunities and challenges each day. They balance the stresses of ministry while they are researching and writing the sermons, managing the affairs of the church, going to countless meetings and counseling others significant problems.
• They wear many hats as the pastor, priest, counselor, preacher, teacher, manager, organizer, visionary, administrator and caretaker all rolled into one with little to no free time.
• As well as dealing with the stresses of modern life with their family all under personal attack and usually doing life with a lower salary and an ungrateful congregation who expects them to be perfect.
• They need your help, they need your prayers! When we commit ourselves to pray for our pastors and church leaders, we will have no need to bicker, gossip, slander, withdraw, place blame, or seek to usurp our will as God’s (Rom. 8:28, 8:33-34, 37-39).
• Praying for your church is like filling a balloon with helium, the more it is filled, the more it will soar and not sore! For us to grow not just numerically, but in what is much more important, spiritually and in community to one another, requires our discipline and passion to pursue Christ more and ourselves less.

Am I faking it?

Hearing about Michael Guglielmucci’s admission to faking his cancer illness made me stop and think. I thought about what is going on in his mind right now, his wife and family, and his church. The embarrassment is beyond words and the hurt is indescribable. He has hurt a lot of people especially those closest to him. Michael has been living a life of fraud, betrayal, lies, pretense, dishonesty…. for the last two years. All because he faked being sick. (in the last 2 years).

Since then I have been searching my own soul as a pastor, a leader, a husband, father and a Christian. Someone who claims to be in a relationship with Jesus for over 22 years. I have been asking myself lots of questions to check where I am in my relationship with God. May be I will post some of those questions later but here’s the BIG Question. Am I faking it?

1. Am I faking the whole Christian thing or am I in a growing, intimate, passionate relationship with Jesus. Am I faking loving God.
1. Am I faking loving people. Do I genuinely love the people I do life with, my family, my leaders, my church, etc…. Do I really love them or is it all fake?
2. Am I faking my relationship with my wife! Is she still the number one woman in my life (like what I said on our wedding day) or have I been faking the whole marriage thing for the last several years.

I heard Casey Treat said the other day that ‘the reason why so many Christian leaders fail is because leaders fail to do the basic Christian stuff’. That basic Christian stuff is praying, bible reading, soul searching, repenting, etc….

When our character is not in an authentic position in God, our ministry is a fake.

Day 3 – 40DOC

‘People who don’t love others whom they have seen can’t love God whom they have not seen’ (1 John 4:20)

The best way to love God is by loving people. Just love them. In spite of who they are and what they do. Jesus modelled this by loving the tax collectors, the prostitues, etc….. A Russian monk worte in his diary “I have learnt to accept people as they are. Whatever they are in the world, a prostitue, a prime minister, it is all the same to me. But sometimes I see a stranger coming up the road, and I say, “Oh, Jesus Christ is it you again?”