Your greatest ministry impact will happen on the smallest level. These are my notes from the two hour leadership session. Please pardon the “shorthand” LOL. You’ll get the point.
2 Cor 9:11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. NIV
Fruitful Christians make disciples. Fruitful Christian leaders inspire disciple makers to do so more effectively.
Your greatest ministry happens on the smallest level. God’s impact when he became man changed the world. Humble self following his example make a meaningful difference in somebody’s life today! ?Ministry? Position = tool
ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS: Rhythm is more powerful than encounter but encounter has the potential to chg rhythm for the rest of your life.
- Inspired to raise up next gen = not just meeting but perpetuating Spring & Fall luncheons every year.
- Inspired to mentor leaders more personally – wkly personal reports & financial alerts if struggling = mtg.
- Inspired to make measurable impact locally – CGroups 1 yr assigned $ amount monthly.
- 5 new CGroups! 6 weeks with potential leaders I called out removing disqualification!
Around 1900 in S TX outside of Beaumont. sked if they could drill for oil on his land. The most productive oil well in history, The Spindletop, was the result. 3 oil companies came out of that field and the man became an instant millionaire. Actually he’d been a millionaire for a long time but he finally utilized the resources that had existed all along.
LESS IS MORE! The love affair of success that abounds in our culture has strangled our theology almost to death.
Selfish ambition can be at ctr of our loving, serving and giving. When it is we’re not serving God or others we’re serving ourselves.
What if marriage isn’t a tool to make us happy but rather to make us holy = more like Jx. If rely on somebody to make us happy we aren’t loving them, we’re using them.
Mega church = hiring more pastrs to provide more prgrms to attract more people. Catering to a consumer culture leaves us overall less effective at making disciples.
If we are merely attracting ppl to attend church without truly making disciples then we are contributing to greater prob of disillusionment in our society.
May have discipleship strategy but if it exists within a consumer culture it will never truly be effective.
CULTURE EATS STRATEGY 4 LUNCH!
2 Pet 1:4-8 …the corruption in the world caused by evil desires…(that make us) ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. NIV
All too easy to slowly deviate from the true course of Christ. A slight deviation can go completely unnoticed and that is what makes it so dangerous. In 1979 a passenger jet with 257 people were on sightseeing flight to Antartica. A mere 2 degree mistake took them 28 mile east of destination. They descended to a lower altitude to see the landscape. They had no idea they were in the path of a 12k feet tall volcano. Snow & ice covering the surface combined with the white clouds made it impossible to detect until instruments started sounding. Too late = crashed and killed everybody on board. It was a terrible tragedy brought on by a minor error of only a few degrees.
STAFF: We are not hiring you to do a job. We are hiring you to develop people. Great preacher and great leader = who do you promote? Great preachers inspire you to believe in them. Great leaders inspire you to believe in you! Hire the leader because the first priority is to develop people. WE MUST VALUE THE LEADERSHIP GIFT ABOVE THE MINISTRY GIFT.
WE NEED PEOPLE DEVELOPERS NOT SKILLED MINISTERS!!! MAKE DISCIPLES! USE YOUR GIFT AND USE YOUR ROLE/POSITION TO MAKE DISCIPLES AND DEVELOP PEOPLE! We are not here to get the job done well as much as we are here to get the people developed effectively!
EVERYBODY NEEDS TO BE MENTORING PEOPLE! Developing people, making time for people = making disciples!!
You can’t have the garden you want without a gardener. Thoughts come and go how do you cultivate them? You can’t have the culture you want without cultivating it.
Mentoring documents – sermons can’t fix broken systems. Elders it’s time to be mothers & fathers!
TURN THE PAGE has changed my life and shaped my legacy. Please read more on this at the bottom of this post:
Ps 102:18 That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD
- What is God doing in our lives that will make an unborn gen look to Him?
YOUR GIFTS WERE NOT GIVEN TO YOU TO INSPIRE PEOPLE AND POSSESS SUCCESS FOR YOURSELF. Your gifts were given to you to empower people and release significance in others.
RESULTS-DRIVEN LEADERS TAKE A TOLL ON PEOPLE.
Driven leaders drive others and take their toll on people. Inspiring leaders inspire others & leave their mark on people. There is a difference between a convincing leader with strong opinions and a compassionate leader with deep convictions.
What if we linked our praise to sincere effort rather than maximum results?
B FRTFL & PRODUCE RESLTS?
Being results-minded can undermine the Gospel msg = prodctn rather than mltiplictn
DON’T HIRE PASTORS TO DO A JOB! Pastors empower volunteers to do the work of ministry! JOB DESCRIPTION!
1 Chron 29:19 And give my son Solomon an uncluttered and focused heart so that he can obey what you command, live by your directions and counsel…” (Message)
Focus is not about focusing on the things that need to be done. Focus is about eliminating all the other good things from your demanding schedule.
- What you don’t do determines what u can do!
Your yes becomes more pwrfl whn no becomes more regular!
Difference between effective ppl & really effective people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
Winners never quit & quitters never win” is not true. Winners quit other things long ago to be good at something else! Stop doing what not good at! Losers quit wht good for them Winners quit what wasn’t part of strategic plan for their lives.
ACTIONABLE CONCLUSIONS: Rhythm is more powerful than encounter but encounter has the potential to change your rhythm for the rest of ur life.
Inspired to what new rhythm?
Purpsing incnvnience 4 sake of relatnshp is comunity.
The table of the Lord was pretty important to Jesus. He invited his friends to eat. He ate w sinners.
After Jesus died he rose one of the 1st things he did was ate a meal with his friends.
Jesus invites us to his table through his body & blood we can now eat with God as friends.
Interesting in 1st few chptrs of Gen we see a meal eaten wo God that ruined everything.
Last few chptrs of Rev we find the marriage supper of the lamb.
Our city will not be transformed by preachers. Our city will be transformed by Christian hospitality.
2 Cor 9:11 You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. NIV
Fruitful Christians make disciples. Fruitful Christian leaders inspire disciple makers to do so more effectively.
Your greatest ministry happens on the smallest level.
MORE ON #TURNTHEPAGE
It’s such a common frustration to feel like we really don’t know where to read even though we feel like we should be reading. The idea I’m sharing here can solve this problem and position us all to discover another level of pursuing God in his Word.
When our daughters were about twelve years old we introduced them to an idea I’d been doing for years. We talked about the value of God’s Word and how it not only renews our minds but how it nourishes our spirit. When we understand our minds are being renewed but even when we don’t our spirit is being nourished if we are engaged and experiencing The Author as we read The Book.
The goal was to start in Genesis and read at least one page a day writing the date at the top of the page. On special dates like birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, etc mentions could be made converting our Bibles into keepsakes and even heirlooms for future generations to hold. Amazingly we never ever pressed them on this again yet they both achieved this very reasonable goal of daily turning the page. It was just a matter of time before they both finished their entire Bibles and we bought them new ones that they are well into now as I write this.
As I read David’s words, “That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD” (Ps 102:18 NAS), I was stricken. What is God doing in our lives that will make an unborn generation look to Him?
Over the past few years I’ve become a huge advocate of this idea and it has truly transformed the culture of our home into an environment where we embrace God’s Word with deeper affection together.
I found this picture of a man who was almost 100 years old holding the Bible he carried in World War II. It struck me when I thought about how valuable this treasure would be to his grandchildren, their children and so on.
Friends of ours who live in England posted this next picture holding Smith Wigglesworth’s Bible – thank you for the inspiration Dan and Joanna Hargreaves. Again I was taken by the priceless treasure this Bible had become to future generations.
My college roommate, Todd Teeples, came to visit Oklahoma City and my daughters met him and his family for the first time. He had been my first Christian friend and actually bought me my first Bible. I marveled to see my daughters peruse the sacred Scripture with almost a sacred enthusiasm as they looked over all my dates, writings, highlights and thoughts. I took my daughters to buy Todd a nice Bible. At lunch I shared my Bible with his family, now more than ¼ of a century old held together by radiator tape I used when it started falling apart. Then I made the presentation to Todd explaining how much he’d impacted my life.
I’m so glad Todd didn’t merely forward me a reading plan but actually bought a physical, tangible Bible that will impact my grandchildren’s grandchildren one day long after Todd and I are celebrating in heaven together.
No generation can effectively disciple itself. A single generation simply cannot contain God’s eternal legacy. We must effectively hand off the baton to the next generation both while we live and after we die.
Below are some verses I find meaningful in regard to inspiring and empowering the next generation church. Below those verses are a number of pictures to provide creative ideas of how you might inspire your children and your children’s friends. At Destiny we have now provided classes helping young teens learn how to illustrate their faith creatively in Scripture. This led to my wife, Tracy, volunteering to teach the idea in Art class in our Christian school. Their work is breath-taking and one Sunday after I finished speaking I discovered a post from one of her students. The young teen had taken the text from my message and interacted with it on a creative level expressing the ideas in art form. It was an “over the moon” moment for me to see someone get what I felt was in God’s heart for us that day.
You can simply search #illustratedfaith to find tons of these illustrations. It has quickly become a movement among this next generation. Thank you Krissy, Tracy and Andrea for devoting yourselves so selflessly to introduce this idea to our church family last year at the conference for young girls.
I’m believing for a legacy to be established through our surrendered lives that awakens the call of God in our children for the next generation!
Ps 48:13-14 …that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever. ESV
Deut 3:28 But commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead this people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see. (NIV) Commission, encourage and strengthen the next generation.
