I'm seeing something on the small group side of our ministry (vs. the cell church side) that I really like...
Books are being published by small group guys (staff pastors at larger churches and small group gurus like Rick Howerton of NavPress) that are saying some very "cell-like" things about small groups. These include:
• Becoming Christ-centered groups, not just gathering people around a topic or activity of interest, and not just gathering people for 40 days to learn about this or that.
• Relating to the unchurched in relational ways, moving away from the "us-them" mentality of missions/service projects so often found in church life.
• Mentoring and Discipleship are being discussed regularly. No one's doing anything about it yet, but at least it's being talked about, which is good! That's how all the trends (healthy or otherwise) begin.
Please pray hard for the small group movement in America. The rest of the Christian world seems to understand the centrality of Christ and a passion to expose the spiritually blind to the existing kingdom of God. The big-box church in America is just waking up to these things.
A compelling, God-sized vision
Each January, I'm taken back to the basics of ministry to see what making a small or large change in ministry might do to increase one's effectiveness. This week, I've been thinking about vision casting as it pertains to the lead pastor.
And then I stopped in my tracks. Why? This would easily put the cart in front of the horse!
First things first
A lead pastor desperately needs a God-sized vision to overwhelm him. In other words, this guy doesn't have a vision for his church, God's vision for the guy's church has completely captivated him!
What does a God-sized vision look like? It's well beyond what any lead pastor can do under his own power; it equips and releases his church's members to be the church; it does not elevate his pulpit ministry but harnesses it for empowering others; it cannot be achieved without God doing some very supernatural things at the beginning, the middle, and the end, and the list goes on and on.
Vision vs. Mission Statements
Don't confuse the two. You need both, but they're very different. Vision is what God has called your church members to be in this world. It's not so much of a destination, but achieving a sustainable condition of health.
So your God-sized vision is what your incredibly healthy church's members will be doing with their time and gifts and skills and the outcome. It's squarely something that God will give you for your church if you petition him for it... just don't go any further after you've received it, which is human nature. Read on to catch what I'm saying here.
Your mission is how you're going to achieve the vision. Pastors often receive a way-cool vision from God for their church and them promptly outline a plan of action (mission) to achieve the vision and guess what? This is the beginning of the end or where the failure is born. Can you guess why the mission is doomed?
While people love to follow someone with a bigger-than-life vision, they do not follow sacrificially if they had no decision in how the vision is to be accomplished.
So, take a good look at your church's vision statement. Is it really a mission statement with lots of goals outlined for the year, or is it a state of health that naturally produces more and more fully devoted followers of Christ?
Once you get a God-sized vision for your church, and then a team of leaders to develop a mission to achieve it, your small group or cell group strategy will be crystal clear. Groups are part of the mission and part of the vision. Groups have a place in each one and should be a strong feature of each one, but not just one or the other.
And then I stopped in my tracks. Why? This would easily put the cart in front of the horse!
First things first
A lead pastor desperately needs a God-sized vision to overwhelm him. In other words, this guy doesn't have a vision for his church, God's vision for the guy's church has completely captivated him!
What does a God-sized vision look like? It's well beyond what any lead pastor can do under his own power; it equips and releases his church's members to be the church; it does not elevate his pulpit ministry but harnesses it for empowering others; it cannot be achieved without God doing some very supernatural things at the beginning, the middle, and the end, and the list goes on and on.
Vision vs. Mission Statements
Don't confuse the two. You need both, but they're very different. Vision is what God has called your church members to be in this world. It's not so much of a destination, but achieving a sustainable condition of health.
So your God-sized vision is what your incredibly healthy church's members will be doing with their time and gifts and skills and the outcome. It's squarely something that God will give you for your church if you petition him for it... just don't go any further after you've received it, which is human nature. Read on to catch what I'm saying here.
Your mission is how you're going to achieve the vision. Pastors often receive a way-cool vision from God for their church and them promptly outline a plan of action (mission) to achieve the vision and guess what? This is the beginning of the end or where the failure is born. Can you guess why the mission is doomed?
God gives vision to lead pastors, but expects them to employ others when it comes to creating a missional direction and speed and the vehicle to achieve it.
While people love to follow someone with a bigger-than-life vision, they do not follow sacrificially if they had no decision in how the vision is to be accomplished.
So, take a good look at your church's vision statement. Is it really a mission statement with lots of goals outlined for the year, or is it a state of health that naturally produces more and more fully devoted followers of Christ?
Once you get a God-sized vision for your church, and then a team of leaders to develop a mission to achieve it, your small group or cell group strategy will be crystal clear. Groups are part of the mission and part of the vision. Groups have a place in each one and should be a strong feature of each one, but not just one or the other.
Helping your leaders and members THINK again in 2012
Of all the new year's resolutions you're probably mulling over, add this super-important one to the list: "Help my small group members and leaders learn to use their brain as much as they use their emotions in 2012"
Yesterday I was doing errands in the car and oddly enough, my radio was tuned into an NPR interview with a professor who made some excellent observations about Americans:
• We no longer take time to stop and invest time thinking about much of anything.
• We no longer rely on our memory banks for previously learned information, turning to Google for quick searches from our phones.
• We don't even ask people what they think about something any longer. It's mostly, "how do you feel about that?"
After his interview, the talk show host opened up the phone lines and people asked all sorts of excellent questions. Included in the questions were:
• Is thinking employed in meditation? ... to which he answered, "If it's meditation a la Buddhism where you are encouraged to clear your mind and allow yourself to focus on nothing in total nothingness to reduce stress and 'center' yourself, no, that's not thinking."
• Is reading a book (as opposed to watching TV) thinking? .... to which he answered, "reading requires far more thinking and processing than watching television, even if the program is educational in nature, Most programming watched though is entertainment-based and very little thinking is required. It's weighted heavily in feeling vs. thinking."
• Are our recent national elections based on feeling or thinking? ... to which he replied he didn't want to open that can of worms knowing there's a lot of deep thought about politics, but there's also a very strong emotional or feeling element to the elections. He did say, "emotions are very high in the country right now, and critical thinking, which always leaves room for error and correction, seems to be found far less than it should."
• Does prayer require thinking? .... to which he replied, "Yes, prayer is very different from meditation and clearing your mind. When one prays he or she is speaking to God and telling God things and asking him to do things or prevent things from happening and it requires a deep thought."
My takeaway from the interview was that I have employed far more feeling-based decision making than is healthy, and in 2012 I endeavor to make far more decisions based on thinking!
"Jesus wept" - John 11:35
Our church plant (which is currently the size of a small group or cell group) is currently applying a chapter of John each week when we meet. I've been reading NT Wright's wonderful series of commentaries on this book, and it's caused me to think very deeply about the fact that every single thing Jesus said and did was done to not only glorify the Father and show obedience to the Father's will, but that Jesus was squarely a thinker and actually set aside his emotions or feelings about something to do the will of the Father and fulfill Old Testament prophecy about the coming Messiah.
When Jesus heard that his close friend Lazarus was sick and dying and knew his other close friends, including Mary and Martha were probably besides themselves in Bethany (which was in fact a kind of hospice place outside the city for dying persons) he did not get up and run to his deathbed to heal him. He spent two days praying, asking the Father for guidance of what to do and when to do it, knowing the future was more important than living in the past, and that his own death was just weeks away.
So he wept not because his friend was dead but because of his compassion for his friends who thought Lazarus was dead and gone forever. But his feelings didn't override his obedient thoughts from the Father.
So here's the take-away: Do your small group members and leaders live mostly by feeling or by focused, reflective thought? Do they spend most of their time in feeling-based entertainment instead of thinking and learning more about themselves, others around them, God, and his call on their lives?
... and most importantly, what are you going to personally change in your day to day activities and how are you going to purposely move away from the often-found entertainment model of ministry (if it can even be called that) to making deep thinking disciples and disciple makers?
Yesterday I was doing errands in the car and oddly enough, my radio was tuned into an NPR interview with a professor who made some excellent observations about Americans:
• We no longer take time to stop and invest time thinking about much of anything.
• We no longer rely on our memory banks for previously learned information, turning to Google for quick searches from our phones.
• We don't even ask people what they think about something any longer. It's mostly, "how do you feel about that?"
After his interview, the talk show host opened up the phone lines and people asked all sorts of excellent questions. Included in the questions were:
• Is thinking employed in meditation? ... to which he answered, "If it's meditation a la Buddhism where you are encouraged to clear your mind and allow yourself to focus on nothing in total nothingness to reduce stress and 'center' yourself, no, that's not thinking."
• Is reading a book (as opposed to watching TV) thinking? .... to which he answered, "reading requires far more thinking and processing than watching television, even if the program is educational in nature, Most programming watched though is entertainment-based and very little thinking is required. It's weighted heavily in feeling vs. thinking."
• Are our recent national elections based on feeling or thinking? ... to which he replied he didn't want to open that can of worms knowing there's a lot of deep thought about politics, but there's also a very strong emotional or feeling element to the elections. He did say, "emotions are very high in the country right now, and critical thinking, which always leaves room for error and correction, seems to be found far less than it should."
• Does prayer require thinking? .... to which he replied, "Yes, prayer is very different from meditation and clearing your mind. When one prays he or she is speaking to God and telling God things and asking him to do things or prevent things from happening and it requires a deep thought."
My takeaway from the interview was that I have employed far more feeling-based decision making than is healthy, and in 2012 I endeavor to make far more decisions based on thinking!
"Jesus wept" - John 11:35
Our church plant (which is currently the size of a small group or cell group) is currently applying a chapter of John each week when we meet. I've been reading NT Wright's wonderful series of commentaries on this book, and it's caused me to think very deeply about the fact that every single thing Jesus said and did was done to not only glorify the Father and show obedience to the Father's will, but that Jesus was squarely a thinker and actually set aside his emotions or feelings about something to do the will of the Father and fulfill Old Testament prophecy about the coming Messiah.
When Jesus heard that his close friend Lazarus was sick and dying and knew his other close friends, including Mary and Martha were probably besides themselves in Bethany (which was in fact a kind of hospice place outside the city for dying persons) he did not get up and run to his deathbed to heal him. He spent two days praying, asking the Father for guidance of what to do and when to do it, knowing the future was more important than living in the past, and that his own death was just weeks away.
So he wept not because his friend was dead but because of his compassion for his friends who thought Lazarus was dead and gone forever. But his feelings didn't override his obedient thoughts from the Father.
So here's the take-away: Do your small group members and leaders live mostly by feeling or by focused, reflective thought? Do they spend most of their time in feeling-based entertainment instead of thinking and learning more about themselves, others around them, God, and his call on their lives?
... and most importantly, what are you going to personally change in your day to day activities and how are you going to purposely move away from the often-found entertainment model of ministry (if it can even be called that) to making deep thinking disciples and disciple makers?
How important is the host for a group? Not so much, actually...
Again, I guest blogged over at Joel's so read my thought there:
http://joelcomiskeygroup.com/blog_2/2011/10/18/how-to-be-a-great-host/
Enjoy!
http://joelcomiskeygroup.com/blog_2/2011/10/18/how-to-be-a-great-host/
Enjoy!
Thought for the day
Radical Islam views Christianity as a threat and followers of Christ as the enemy, making them a target.
Each time I train Western Christians about relational evangelism (becoming genuine friends with people who are nothing like you) I get the feeling they feel the same way as the radical Muslims... Unbelievers are the enemy... And when the enemy is engaged, they must be targeted for conversion. No real relationship can be formed until they become born-again.
How prevalent is this mentality in your church?
Each time I train Western Christians about relational evangelism (becoming genuine friends with people who are nothing like you) I get the feeling they feel the same way as the radical Muslims... Unbelievers are the enemy... And when the enemy is engaged, they must be targeted for conversion. No real relationship can be formed until they become born-again.
How prevalent is this mentality in your church?
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