MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ part 5 PREACHING

MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ part 5 PREACHING
THIS MATERIAL BELOW
is a borrowed material
for DISCUSSION PURPOSES at
HIS LIFE DIVINITY SCHOOL

PART 5 of 10




THE PREACHING FACTOR

He was tall, well dressed, serious looking, yet polite.
I was shaking hands at the door after sermon which I thought had really rung a bell.
I could see him waiting by the wall; I knew he wanted to talk to me.
Finally, when everyone else had left, we talked.

Though not an exact quotation because of the number of years that have passed, this is what he said, “I came to church today to hear from God through His word, I didn’t come to hear some subjects talked about laced with illustration, sprinkled with Bible verses, and concluded with a tear-jerking story.”

We exchange pleasantries, he left, and I never saw him again.
In typical ministerial style, wrote his remarks off as another bell yacher and complainer, a kook, and trouble-maker that I hope wouldn’t return. After all, he had attacked the thing that I did best, preach. (At least I thought I did a good job in that department.) as I sat in my study that Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t get his words off my mind.
Monday, they came back to haunt me again.
Opening my sermon file, I spent the whole day examining every sermon I had preached in my life, about three hundred at that time.
Guess what? 95% of them were subject sermons.
Shortly thereafter, I came into contact with a preacher at a conference that wowed the audience with a simple, yet profound expository sermon. I couldn’t wait to talk to him in private. He asked me what kind of sermons I preached. Somewhat shame-facedly I told him.

I will never forget his remark, “People will never be drawn to a diet of hors d’oeuvres and snacks consistently, they will invariably crave meat… you must preach the Bible, book by book, chapter by chapter verse by verse.”

That was probably the biggest turning point in my ministry.
I went home and destroyed my existing sermon schedule, and started preaching through the gospel of John, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse. It took me a year and a half to finish that discipline, but by then I was hooked!

Expository preaching is defined differently from school to school.
Laying no claim to being a homiletical expert, and without delving into all the academia concerning homiletic principles, here is a description of what I believe Bible preaching or expository preaching is.
It is taking what is usually more than one verse of scripture and drawing from those verses truths in the present tense with which listeners have no problem identifying. That is a mouthful, but the essence of this type of preaching is simply taking the truth of God’s Word and applying it to life, where people are. It is not expounding a truth or principle, then frantically searching for verses to back it up. In this sense, expository preaching is primarily deductive, i.e., taking the truth of the Word, then deducing from that word its truth for the present.
People are drawn to that kind of preaching because in it they not only learn the Word of God over the months and years, they are equipped with God’s principles derived from that word.

The advantages are obvious.
First, it is advantageous for the preacher in that he never wonders what he’ll be preaching the next week. It will always be the next few verses from where you stopped the week before! “But doesn’t that get boring?” some ask. Never! To the contrary, when people can see the Word they have read for years come to life, they are far from being bored. Another advantage is that difficult and objectional subjects are covered in expository preaching naturally.
For example, one can’t preacher through the book of II Corinthians without coming to chapters 8&9 where Paul goes into long detail about giving. If you preach on those verses as you come to them, it means you haven’t selected them over others for a special stewardship Sunday, but that they too are truth and must be preached just as boldly and strongly as the resurrection in chapter 15 of I Corinthians.

Still another obvious advantage is the Biblical teaching given over an extend period of time.
In 18 years at my pulpit, I have preached through John, Mark, Acts, Revelation, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, I&II Peter, I&II Thessalonians, Hosea, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, I John, and I & II Samuel. That doesn’t mean you should never preach a subject sermon. There are many occasions when strong prophetic sermons need to be preached concerning issues of our day like abortion, homosexuality, drunkenness, etc. we should never shy away from those things, but 90% of the time, a diet of expository preaching will draw and feed people. It will serve as the greatest conservation program a church could ever have.

The advantage of people coming to church with their Bibles tucked under their arms is great indeed. Last of all, but not least of all, expository preaching keeps the preacher’s pump primed. It demands intensive exegetical study weekly, thus keeping him in the well of Biblical truth. In fact, it probably does as much or more for him than it does for his listeners.

Maybe you are saying (if you are a preacher), “but who has the time for this?”
Maybe you’re in charge of the printing, the maintenance, the finances, the worship, the evangelism, the shepherding, the Christian Education, etc. and to devote the extra hours to this would complete your burn out. The only answer to this is to ask what it is God has called you to do as a minister.
I firmly believe we cannot evade or avoid our responsibility to be a preaching/teaching pastor if nothing else gets done!
I believe there comes a time when every pastor must say what the twelve said,
“It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables” (Acts 6:2b).
We need to do what God has called us to do. That doesn’t mean a preacher shouldn’t get his feet wet in all areas at various stages in his life, but great blocks of time must be cleared to prepare depthful and meaty messages from God’s Word. That means of course that he cannot be everyone’s errand boy and the church printer.

Without applying all the rules of homiletics, here’s a step by step sequential order for planning an expository message.

Select a book whose message speaks to the current needs of the church.
Every preacher needs to have his hand on the pulse of the people.
Do you have many new believers?
A trip through Mark will help acquaint them with Jesus.
Is your congregation short-sighted about vision?
Take them through the book of Acts! Its power and action will awaken the dead.
I guarantee it!!!
Perhaps there has been much tragedy in the congregation, try II Corinthians.
It’s amazing how God can take what we consider to be an obscure section of scripture and use it to bless people in just about any situation.

I am of the firm conviction that Sunday morning messages should feed, bless, equip, challenge the saints. To be sure, there is always an evangelistic atmosphere and spirit, but the primary purpose of preaching on Sunday mornings is to mature the believers. But every pastor knows his sheep.
And their needs change from time to time, and their needs will become the criteria for selecting the book which to preach.

Lay out the sections of scripture you will cover each Sunday for about three or four months in advance. That doesn’t mean those sections can’t change, but for example, If you are preaching through I John, the first few messages would look like this:


DATE

___________ Sermon No. 1 FROM THE BEGINNING I John 1:1-4

___________ Sermon No. 2 THE LIGHT & DARKNESS I John 1:5-7

___________ Sermon No. 3 SIN & THE CHRISTIAN John 1:8-10 etc.


This lets you know well in advance what verses of scripture will be under consideration for that Sunday.

Read the verses under consideration at least 6 times from the version out of which you will preach. Write in your own words exactly what you think those verses are saying.

Read those verses from at least 5 modern speech translations in order to pick up a drift in the way a phrase or verses is translated. Helpful translations for me are ones by Wuest, Goodspeed, New English Bible, Amplified Bible, Phillips translation, Barclay, and Williams.

Jot down key words in the verses. Sometimes these are verbs, sometimes nouns.
What a key word? It is a word whose root meaning you suspect will make a difference if it is looked up in the original. Occasionally there will be several key words up in a good word study book for root meanings. Often, this enhances you preaching by enabling you to get more than just what appears on the surface.

Now you need to write the main points from you study.
Every preacher has his own way of identifying those words, phrases, and flow that make up the main points. One thing must be remembered in expository preaching; your main points flow out the verses, the text. These points need to be clear, simple, short, and reflective of what the verse is saying.
John 3:16 is a good example:


          Main Points Text says

A Wonderful Fact “God so loved the world,”

A Wonderful Act “. . . gave His only Son.”

A Wonderful Pact “That whoever believes in Him

                                                                 should have eternal life.”


I am of the persuasion that main points need to be always in the present tense.
This proves how relevant scripture is. In other words, it’s not that Jesus SAVED (past tense) Daniel from the jaw of the lion, but that God delivers you today from so much more that would devour you!


Now it’s time for the commentaries.
A word of warning here. Our tendency is to always grab the commentary first, when in reality it should be the end of our preparation.
Why? Remember that those men who wrote the commentaries had to get their insights from someplace. Where did they get them? Obviously they came by pouring over the scriptures themselves. Not to deny scholarly insight, nor minimize others’ ideas, God still wants to internalize His word in the preacher who preaches it. There is no substitute for poring over the passages in meditation and prayer.

The final input in preparation comes from listening to messages of other great contemporary preachers who have preached on that passage. I also believe in anointing and unction that comes even while the message is being preached. I always pray this prayer before I preach: “Lord, set aside anything I have planned that is in your way, and replace it with your fresh word for this hour.”

What about notes?
I’ve found it to be very helpful to keep a manuscript out of the pulpit.
I jot my main points, sub-points, illustrations, and support references on 5x8 cards.
Too much dependence on too many notes keeps one’s head looking downward far too much!
Nothing can take the place of eye contact in preaching.

By now you’re asking, “well and fine, but what does all this have to do with church growth?”
Much in every way! There are two extremes in preaching today. At one end of the spectrum is didactics only. This is the preacher who literally teaches from the pulpit. His interests become the impartation of Biblical truths, organized, outlined, laced with appropriate scriptures, etc.
Often, this becomes the end in itself.
People leave this kind of service with eight pages of a notebook full on both sides, but few lives are changed.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is the experiential preacher.
His sermon consists of a series of experiences, stories, examples, poems and quotations, maybe sprinkled with a verse here and there. This kind of feeding only temporarily satisfies the scriptural hunger, then hunger pangs return very quickly because no meat has been dispensed.
History has borne out that church grow by neither extreme, but by steady week by week expository preaching covering so many verses per week, but preaching those verses using all tools of exegesis and delivery.

Christians visiting will return because perhaps where they’ve gone before, not much of the bible is preached.
Unsaved people will return because the word preached creates hunger for more of it. I can safely and honestly say that I do not know of one dynamic and growing church in America where the bible is not preached faithfully.

These “ten commandments” are for every preacher who desires to preach effectively so the church will grow.

THOU SHALT PREACH PREPARED.
          There is no substitute for poor or no preparation.

THOU SHALT PREACH IN THE VERNACULAR! Jesus preached in terms all could follow. 
          We should do no less.

THOU SHALT PREACH NOT RIDE THY HOBBY HORSE IN THE PULPIT.
          The tendency to get sidetracked onto our favorite subject is ever before us all. Avoid it!!

THOU SHALT SO PREACH THAT THE AUDIENCE USES THEIR BIBLE.
          They have brought their Bibles to uses, disappoint them.

THOU SHALT PREACH WITH EXCITEMENT.
          Your audience will not become more excited than you are.

THOU SHALT NEVER BACK AWAY FROM CONTROVERSIAL SCRIPTURE BECAUSE
        IT ISNT POPULAR.
            God wants it all preached.

THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER TASK BEFORE THEE THAN TO PREACH THE WORD
        IN POWER.
            You have not been called to entertain, but preach God’s word.

THOU SHALT PREACH WITH A SMILE.
            Seldom does the Holy Spirit use a lead a soul to Christ.

THOU SHALT PREACH FOR DECISIONS.
            Every sermon should answer the question, “So what?”

THOU SHALT PREACH EVERY SERMON AS THOUGH IT WERE YOUR LAST.
            It’s called preaching with a sense of urgency. There is no place for casual preaching.


Paul said: “. . . it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”
I believe we need strong Biblical preaching for the world today more than ever before.

There are some obvious enemies of preaching today. Every would-be effective preacher should be familiar with them:

TELEVISION.
Far more than 50% of adult Americans watch television in excess of 20 hours per week. They are accustomed to color, cleverness, concise communication, and clarity. When they walk into your church on Sunday morning, the demand for sharp, interesting, and colorful preaching is heightened greatly today.

THE COMPUTER AGE.
Nothing has affected the work place more in our generation than the computer. It dawned on me one day that my audience consisted of hundreds of people whose eyes are on a computer screen during much of their 40-hour work week. They are not accustomed to doing a lot of intense thinking, nor are they accustomed to only LISTENING to communication. They have come to church from a week of SEEING charts, graphs, percentages, cleverly done comparisons and price inventories, all done in living color on a screen! That means my sermon must be extremely relevant, stimulating and motivating. The computer age has put all us preachers on our toes.

THE ENTERTAINMENT BINGE.
The last ten of twelve years have seen a dramatic change in people’s church-going habits. Entertainment has entered the church in the form of traveling “artists” who are “booked” for their “performances.” They draw crowds and standing ovations. No one should ever be opposed to any group who ministers music and drama in churches and arenas, and certainly no one would argue against the fact that there is a message in much of the Christian music today. But if church A is featuring a popular singing group on Sunday evening and Church B in the same town is featuring their able bodied pastor who is preaching, church A will be crowded and church B will probably be lower than usual in attendance. So a new dimension of “competition” is with us and likely to stay for a while.

I believe there is no room for tame, vanilla, generic preaching.
We are up against a supernatural power of evil, and that requires a supernatural message delivered in a supernatural way. If we want people to bleed, we must hemorrhage. That’s why good, expository preaching is much more than just teaching some verses and their meaning for today. Authentic preaching is mouth to ear resuscitation! It is a matter of life and death, it is preaching as a dying man to dying men, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Let it never be done casually. Real Bible preaching is always done with exclamation points and never question marks. People have not come to hear you air you doubts reservations about this and that, but rather to hear a word from the Lord, preached in a major key, not in a minor one. I find myself praying this prayer before “mounting” the pulpit to preach:

O God . . . don’t let the pulpit call me to the sermon . . . let the sermon call me to the pulpit.
Before I break the bread of life, Lord, break me! Wash from heart and lip the iniquity there . . . 
I want to preach, yea hemorrhage under the divine anointing. God . . . strip me of all pride . . . all cleverness . . . all showmanship . . . and salesmanship. Deliver me from reliance on suaveness, education, academics, personality, notes, canned quips and celestial cliches.
Let me speak with the humility of Moses, the patience of Job, the wisdom of Paul, the power of
Peter and the authority of Christ. Lord, make my preaching clear, not clever; passionate, not pitiful; urgent, not usual; meaty, not murky.

May it comfort the disturb the comfortable, warn the sinner, mature the saint, give hope to the discouraged, and ready for Heaven the whole audience.

Let self be abased, Christ be exalted, the cross be central and the plea be with passion. May my eyes never be dry. Just now Lord, take me out of myself, usurp anything I’ve planned to say when it’s in the way of YOUR message. Here I am Lord, I’m your vessel! AMEN.

Whenever else may be present in dynamic growing churches today, the preached word is there in power and prominence. Many are highly critical of growing churches who seem to grow because of the preacher. Accusations of “preacher-worshippers” are attached to members of those churches. And to be sure, there is a danger that while the dynamic, Bible-centered preaching of a man draws people to a place and may be the same thing that keeps them there even for years, that somehow their worship and admiration of the man doesn’t graduate on to the Lord as it should. But, is that a reason for a gifted expositor who happens to be God’s prophet for the hour and place, to “cool” his calling, and throttle back his own God-given style just so people won’t come just because of Him? No, because God has consistently used His anointed people at seasons and places. I think of the Moodys, the Whitefields, the Weasleys, the Sundays, the Grahams, plus many other contemporaries whom God has used and is using.

When preaching is restored to its proper place in the church again, we’ll begin to see tremendous growth. The Word still stands as a reminder to every would-be preacher:

. . . preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching (II Tim. 4:2)

The preaching factor cannot be ignored in the local church if growth is to come.

MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ part 4 WORSHIP

COVER PAGE of OUR WORSHIP 101 BOOKLET at HIS LIFE MINISTRIES 

MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ part 4 WORSHIP
THIS MATERIAL BELOW
is a borrowed material
for DISCUSSION PURPOSES at
HIS LIFE DIVINITY SCHOOL

PART 4 of 10


THE WORSHIP FACTOR

If your worship services are totally predictable every time your church is suffering from a lack of unrestrained worship. How high on the list of church growth factors is proper worship? It has to be very close to the top. Since 93% of all first-time visitors make their first contact with a local church by attending a morning worship service, something significant and awesome better happen there. It cant be “business as usual”.

If its true that true worship is the total extension of our total beings to God in praise, adulation and adoration, we better make sure that all the dynamics for  the expressions of that worship are present.

Without a long , theological treatise on Biblical worship, some things must be said to form the backdrop for any church that desires to see people drawn to Christ through worship. Only a few years ago, worship did not appear on my list of church growth factors and principles as a key for growth. But having understood just a little of the true meaning of worship and having experienced personally the joy and fulfillment of unrestrained worship, I would not only add it to my list, but push it up to the top.

Its no secret today that the church, from what we read in the scriptures has a four-fold ministry. It is WORSHIP, WORD, WITNESS and WORK. Though these flow together and overlap, if the real worship isn’t there, both corporately and individually, the rest is quite redundant. Fortunately for the church today , worship the long missing jewel, is being rediscovered as well as recovered. Somehow, some way, at some point in our history, Satan cleverly stole worship away from the church. Devoid of true worship, the church has basically” gone through the motions” it has pumped itself up by programs, plants, projects, promotions and a plethora of activities, but the jewel that brings the life has truly been missing. At all costs, we must storm the gates of hell and re-capture this jewel, restoring it to its rightful position. Then and only then will God’s church begin to move again.

Jesus made it clear at the outset of his ministry that there is a true worship as opposed to the false.
But the is coming and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).

Notice something in that scripture we tend to forget. Jesus referred to the “true” worship. That implies that there is a phony , false , counterfeit worship that also happens. There are good  examples of in biblical history. Nadab and Abihu offered  strange fire. Making a sacrifice in worship not according to divine  plans ( Lev. 0:1-2). Saul disregarded God’s plan that none but were to function at the altar and as a results of that plusother things lost his kingship (1Sam. 13:8-14a). of course the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus day made void the word of God  by their legalistic tradition, thus their worship was hollow and meaningless (Matt. 15 :1-9) . Much of Israel’s worship had been reduced to only forms. That’s why God said what He said in Isaiah 1:11.

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Says the Lord” I have enougn of burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; I  do not delight in the blood of bulls or lambs or he goats”.

That’s why Jesus said we are to worship Him in spirit and truth. Spirit without the truth is aimless, experiential subjectivism. Truth without the spirit of man is nothing more than  cold form of legalism. God wants both spirit and truth.

What is real worship? It is attributing to God in thought, word  and deed the glory, honor, the praise and adoration that is due Him

Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name; worship the Lord in Holy array (Psa. 29:1a-2).

We try again and again to get across to our audience that they come to church to offer the Lord something , not to get something out of the Lord. We’ve all heared the remark. “I didn’t get anything out of the service today.” I always want to say “Who said you were supposed to?” Now to be sure, we always “get” something when we give something! But our primary purpose for gathering in assembly on Sundays is to ascribed to the Lord the worship and praise due His name. that is our objective. God is the audience, we, the congregation, are the performers. In a day when so much of church life has become “religious show biz”, and the “stars” are  performing on the platform while the people applaud their talent, the true biblical concept is hard  to get through! It’s not that God NEEDS our worship. God NEEDS nothing! He is self-sufficient, but He wants our worship because of what happens when we give it.

True worship is the best understood in the truth that God dwells and manifests Himself in the midst of a praising people rather than a watching people rather than a watching people. That’s why Psalm 22:3 tells us: “Yet thou art holy, ENTHRONED ON THE PRAISES OF ISRAEL.” There is a lot of punch in that verse! The King James version makes it even more graphic when it says that God INHABITS the praises of Israel. What a truth, God inhabits (lives, dwells, is at home, abides) in the midst of a praising people. Is God made to be “at home” in your worship services?

I think one reason so many worship services are cold, routine, predictable and unmoving is that they lack the sense that God is manifestly present, sitting enthroned on the praises of the people. When there is no praise, there is no sense of His presence. When there is no sense of His presence, there is no excitement or joy.

A way common misconception many have about worship is manifested is a recent church bulletin I saw. At the top of the bulletin were these words in bold type; “THIS IS THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. IF YOU MUST WHISPER, WHISPER A PRAYER TO GOD.” There are two things wrong with that exhortation. First, the building is not the sanctuary of God. We are. Secondly, worship and praise in the Bible is not done in whisper, but shout ! A good example of this comes from the Old Testament. When the builders were putting in the foundation of the temple, there was a worship service to commemorate it. Listen to this description.
And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David, king of Israel; and they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, :for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” And all the  shouted with great shout, when they praised the L:ord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priest  and Levites and heads of father’s houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice, when they saw the foundation of this house being laid through many shouted aloud for joy; so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with great shout and the sound was heard afar (Ezar 3:10-13)

Now if doesn’t  take Ph. D. In mathematics to know that in those four short verses, the word SHOUT or SHOUTED appears 6 times plus one other time where LOUD VIOCE is used! That church bulletin wouldn’t have been too popular in that worship assemble. If you need another example, what about the time when God’s people brought the ark of the covenant home?
When the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout so that the earth resounded (1 Sam. 4:5).

Search the Psalms and you will find nowhere that worship is to be quite and subdued. Someone may object and say, “but doesn’t the Word say the Lord is in his Holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him?” But remember, it says “all the earth”, not all worshippers! No , worship is to be expressive, that’s why the Psalmist can say, “Clap your hands all ye people, SHOUT unto God with the voice of triumph “ (Psa. 47:1).

Real praise also releases God’s power in a new and fresh way. When Jehoshaphat was hemmed in, outnumbered and about to be slaughtered , he did what the world would think foolish… he praised the Lord. One of the most significant verses in the Bible makes a comment on his action.

And when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab and Mt. Seir who had come against Judah and they were routed (1Chron. 20:22).
Is that God’s impeccable timing or not? What a message! No matter what surrounds us, no matter how black the circumstances, no matter how outnumbered we are, no matter how impossible the situation appears, praise releases God’s power and makes real His presence.
God is worthy to be  praised for who He is. He is incomparable in His position, His person and His passion. His characteristics are bound up in His names, given in scripture; he is Elohim, the one who speaks, He is El-Shaddai, the God of power. He is Adonai, the God who owns. He is Jehoveh-Jireh, our provider. He is Jehoveh-Rophe, ou healer. He is Jehoveh-Nissi, our standard bearer. He is Jehoveh-M’Kaddesh, our purifier. He is Jehoveh-Shalom, our peace. He is Jehoveh-Tsidkenu, our righteousness. He is Jehoveh-Shamnah, the God who comforts. That’s enough to get us started. He is to be praised not only for whom He is, but what He has done and does.

With that brief sketch of background of what worship is, how, practically, do we worship the Lord so that our worship services are alive, exciting, expectant, exhilarating and challenging? Without going into detail, we do need to be reminded that the biblical model for worship makes room to put our whole being in to it. There is the laughing mouth, the uplifted hands, the dancing feet, the extolling tongue, the bent knee, the clapping hands, the prostate position and the singing mouth. Does your worship service make room for any or all of that to happen?

Practically speaking, here are some solid suggestions to make your service of worship on Sunday not only biblical, but refreshing. We might call these the marks of unrestrained worship.

1. Don’t announce what you are  going to do, just do it. In other words, don’t say, “Now, we are going to sing such and such,” just do it. This brings a flow and momentum to the service that otherwise would not be present.

2. Sing TO the Lord, not just about the Lord, so much of congregational singing is comprised of one extreme or the other. We tend to sing little ditties that sound good, but don’t have much meat, or we sing the stilted hymns that leave cold and devold of life. Praise songs directed to God evoke excitement. The Psalmist said, “O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth” (Psa. 95:1).

3. Use “planned spontaneity” in the service. That may sound like doubletalk, but what it really means is to so structure your worship that there is room for spontaneous praise times, an additional chorus, scripture or whatever. Spontaneity doesn’t have to mean confusion, but is means giving the Holy Spirit the room and freedom to do what He wants to when He wants to.

4. Omit the “printed” order of worship. When everyone can look and see what is going to happen next, it is unfruitful predictability that shouldn’t be there in my opinion. This of course, gives you freedom to  depart from the “hidden” agenda if the Lord moves you so.

5. Put the words to the music on the wall so people’s hands and arms are free to clap or be lifted. When someone is holding a hymnbook with their nose tightly fixed into it, there is somewhat of a loss of freedom in worship. Also, when the words are up on the wall, people’s heads are up when they are singing and not pointed to the floor.

6. Avoid verbal announcements about events in the worship service. Print the announcements or put them on an overhead. They tend  to break the spirit of worship when verbally spoken.  Also, people don’t remember what is said  most of the time concerning dates, place and times.

7. Use as much of an orchestra in worship as possible. If your church is small, use in good taste a set of drums and a bass guitar to enhance the rhythm.

8. As stated earlier, don’t announce everything that’s going to happen, just enter into it. There is no need to say, “now the choir is going to sing,” or now Mrs. Smith will sing a solo, or “now we are going to take communion.” Also, never allow long pauses between events in the service. People have come from a week of seeing thins move right along, then come  to church and watch things drag with long sections in between has an unworshipful effect.

9. Promote a re-service praise time. This occurs 10 to 15 minutes before the stated time for worship where someone just begins leading people in praise and prayer choruses to get people in the worshipful mood before the regular service starts. It is estimated that 40% of your crowd sits in the auditorium between 10 and 15 minutes with nothing to do but watch people who come in. why not bring those people into the spirit of worship by giving them the opportunity to sing and praise the Lord?

10. Insert periodic “clap offerings” in the service to the Lord. This is when the leader simply says, “God is worthy to be applauded for His mighty___________, so let’s give Him a clap offering this morning!” this releases people to express their praise in one more way to the Lord. not everyone can sing well, but all who have two strong hands can clap well.

11. Plan some designated time, maybe not every week, for people to have the opportunity to kneel, not just to pray, but to humble themselves before God, in acknowledgment of His majesty and lordship.

12. Refer often to the offering as a tangible expression of our worship, because that is what it is. Sometimes it’s good to have people give a testimony during the offering.
How long should a worship service be? If they are the old, dead, traditional type of services, fifteen minutes would be plenty long. If they are vibrant, exciting, and uplifting, 1 ½ to 2 hours certainly isn’t too long.

Through our services vary from season to season, and sometimes from Sunday, below is a “flow” we’ve found to be highly effective:

5-10 minutes pre-service praise 
Orchestra & choir with opening chorus (always something majestic and worshipful)
Audience stand & sing two songs of praise, one right after the other Baptisms, if there are candidates 
Choir (for everyone) 
Greeting time (urge everyone to meet someone new)
Chorus
Pastor’s minutes
     Welcome first timers
      Have people fill out cards
      Lead in 3 praise choruses
Prayer time 
Communion & offering (soloist during offering)
Sermon
Invitation to come forward & accept Christ
Closing remarks and closing chorus!

Remember, there are no long pauses in between each act of worship. You’ll notice there’s no place for “promoting programs” or making long boring announcements.

Well-trained ushers can contribute greatly to the smooth running of a flowing worship service. If properly trained, they can tactfully intercept parents of screaming infants, little children causing disturbance, teens that talk and disrupt the service, and people who become ill. Also, through training, ushers can be ready for their role in receiving the offering, giving out first time visitor packets, serving communion, and other things.

Never allow the worship service to become an orchestrated performance, staged by a few and viewed by many. That totally defeats the biblical concept that real worship is not a spectator sport, but is to be entered into by all. If there is an audience at all in worship, it is God, but the people who are present, all of them, are the performers. The concept doesn’t come naturally, it must be faithfully preached and taught, and more than once! Ours is a culture of watching, performances, applause, and on-looking. Most carry that concept right across the threshold into the auditorium where they worship.

As said earlier, exciting, uplifting, and God-centered worship is a greater contribute to evangelism and church growth than most people can ever imagine. How? Again, remember that 93% of all the people who make their first contact with your  church ( from church to church that figure will vary slightly) make it through your worship service. If that first contact is unspiring, disconnected and done in a slip-shod way, the odds are great they won’t be back a second time, if , on the other hand, they see about them God’s people  intensely involved in worship and praise, putting their whole self into it, they will be moved.

In calling on a visitor who had visited our church for the first time on a previous Sunday, this business executive had a little or no interest in things spiritual. Through a corporate move, they were new to our area, and one of the things he promised his Christian wife was that when they got moved and settled he would go to church with her as she sought out a new church home in the area. Paraphrasing his words, this non Christian executive said to me in his home, “Frankly, preacher, I never went to church, and I wasn’t raised  in a Christian home. I agreed to visit with my wife a couple of times to satisfy her, and as before I would be content to let her come alone and do her thing at church while I did mine at the golf course. But when I walked in and saw everyone singing with uplifted hands toward God, and saw the tears rolling down the cheeks of many men my age who also wore 3-piece suits, I crackled! I knew they had something  I was missing and all of a sudden I wanted to know the God to whom  they were giving such intense intense worship .” I was privileged to be used to help lead that man to the Lord. May his tribe increased! I believe churches who suffer from a low visitor problem need to overhaul their concept of worship, as well as their worship services. There is something about praising God that evangelistically draws unsaved people toward God.
In streamlining your services, be sure and leave room for “planned spontaneity.” Those two words may sound self contradictory, but in reality it means that you plan for a “flow” but always leave room for another song, or a different song, or maybe no song at all in that particular place. There is something about the freshness of God’s presence that calls for being quite open to improvisation at the last minute. There are some weeks when the Lord seems to be leading us in the service to a time of contrition, or time of extreme joy, or a time of extended praise. There must be room to accommodate whatever God is doing at the moment, rather than just running roughshod through a printed order just because we don’t want to adapt or improvise or because it’s easier. For instance, one Sunday as we were worshipping, following what we had planned, in the middle of one of the songs, the Lord impressed upon me that many people were in the service hurting that Sunday morning. So we switched to another song, “I Cast All My Cares Upon You.” I asked for all who were being bent by a terrific load of care to come to the front altar while we sang and released the care. Almost 200 people came and knelt at the altar that morning. Believe me, that was NOT planned, but thank God the instrumentalists didn’t mind improvising, the ushers didn’t mind waiting a few minutes longer for the offering and I didn’t mind cutting my message a little shorter to accommodate what God was doing in our midst. That is planned spontaneity.

A BIBLICAL MODEL

Nowhere in scripture will you find a better “model” for worship than Psalm 113. A short Psalm, it somehow captures all the elements about worship and puts the worship of God in a different perspective than the usual.

1. IT TELLS US THE WHO OF PRAISE: It starts out by saying “Praise the LORD” in verse 1. He is the object of our praise. As started earlier, He is the audience, not the people who gather. On the contrary they are the “performers”. While true worship is subjective in that it is always experiential, it is first objective, in that the object lies beyond us. The Lord is the recipient of our adoration, blessing, thanksgiving, songs and hallelujahs. If we can remember that in planning a worship service, it will color everything we say, sing, and do.

2. IT TELLS US WHO THE PRAISE-GIVERS ARE: Again in verse 1, “Praise OSERVANTS of the Lord, praise the name of  the Lord.” We are the praise givers, not the praise receivers. Again, we enter into worship to dispense something, not to receive something. To be sure, we do receive, but the receiving is the normal outcome of the dispensing. It is interesting that David referred to the praise-givers as “servants”. He didn’t call us worshippers, congregation, audience or people, but “servants.” I believe this was deliberate, because it shows the proper relationship between the worshipper and the worshipped.

3. IT TELLS US THE TIME FACTOR OF WORSHIP: Verse 2 says, “Blessed be the name of the Lord, FROM THIS TIME FORTH AND FOREVERMORE.” So worship is not just something you do in church on Sunday mornings at 11:00 and then maybe again on Sunday evenings or mid-week. It is an on going attitude of life that should permeate our thinking and our speech. To be sure, there will be times of concentrated worship, special times of personal worship, other times set aside for entering into corporate worship with intensity. But as far as “when” to worship, its an on-going, unceasing experience we develop as an attitude of gratitude. Driving the car, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, taking a shower or just listening to music can provide excellent settings for worship. Try it!!

4. IT TELLS US THE GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDERIES OF WORSHIP: Verse 3 says, “From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised!” Any way you measure that phrase, it means the whole earth, every nation, tribe, every race, every culture ,every level of creation….. the whole earth is to praise the Lord.

5.  IT TELLS US THE PERSPECTIVE OF WORSHIP: “The Lord is high above the nations, and his glory above the heavens!” the exaltation of God makes our worship a comic exercise. He is exalted above the earth, above all that is common and mundane, above the heavens, indeed above the highest heavens! When we enter into an intense time of worship, something big is happening that transcends all human transactions! If you want your perspective stretched, then just worship in Spirit and in truth.

When the missing ruby of worship is restored, Satan will indeed be routed. He shudders to think of the power present in the midst of a worshipping people. Churches that are learning to worship God biblically, unrestrained, uninhibited and not bound and  gagged by generations of tradition are indeed growing. People are attracted to people who worship.

I am told weekly by people who visit our worship services that they finger themselves crying in worship. Most of them cannot put their finger on why they cry. One man recently  said, “I think I know why I end up crying in church every Sunday . I am so awed at the presence of God made real, I can’t stop the tears, “What a testimony! It’s true, when true worship is accorded its rightful place again, many will be awed and moved.

“O sing to the Lord a new song, For He has done marvelous things!”
Psalm 98:1

------------
supplement: make sure to share this for all WORSHIP TEAMS to comply: CLICK BELOW
GUIDELINES for LEADERS of WORSHIP at HLM

MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ part 3 MATURATION

THIS MATERIAL BELOW
is a borrowed material
for DISCUSSION PURPOSES at
HIS LIFE DIVINITY SCHOOL

PART 3 of 10

THE MATURATION FACTOR

In my mind’s eye, I have always pictured the great commission in this boy-like chart:
(SEE CLASS DRAWING)


...
...



You will notice that evangelism box are the mature to reproduce box are the same size.


The command, “Go make disciples” begins with evangelism, leading people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The other prong of the commission is “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
That’s the maturation factor.

That effort, along with money and time spent, must be just as large and just as vital as the evangelism factor. Now some churches are long on evangelism and short on maturation. That will eventually stop the evangelism. Other churches are long on maturation and short and short on evangelism, and of course, that will eventually extinguish any evangelism. There must be a balance.

We have made as our watchword on maturation the words of Paul:

Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ (Col. 1:28).

Maturation of new believers is a responsibility that is just as binding on the local church as the command to evangelize the lost. Yet in many quarters, this is a hit-and-miss process that is mostly miss!


IMMEDIATE FOLLOW-UP
We use tools for this.
When a person accepts Christ, either in the home when a caller is there, or in the counseling room when they’ve come forward at an invitation, we first go over with them immediately on the spot,
“7 FACTS YOU CAN BELIEVE.” It looks like this:


SEVEN FACTS YOU CAN BELIEVE

1. You can know you are saved. I John 5:13
2. You are a new person in the eyes of God. II Cor. 5:17
3. You now have the Holy Spirit living in you. Acts 2:38
4. You are cleansed and forgiven of all sin. I John 1:7
5. You are no longer condemned. Rom. 8:1
6. You have become a disciple (follower) of Jesus Christ. A disciple:
-is unashamed (Mark 8:38)
-continues in the Word (John 8:31)
-loves God and others (Matt. 10:37; John 13:35)
-is obedient (John 15:10)
7. You have been added to Christ’s church. Acts 2:47

We never rush through these facts, but spend some time on each one as an assurance aid for the new babe in Christ. The second tool used in the immediate follow-up is a tape we ask them to play within the next 24 hours. One side is a 30-minute monologue by me, the pastor, on assurance of salvation, basically dealing with our security in Christ. On the other side, there is a step-by-step account of how to have a quiet time. I am convinced that getting the new believer into the word and prayer immediately is as vital as breathing!

Immediate follow-up in the maturation process is not optional.
Physicians tell us that the first 24 hours of a new infant’s life is crucial.
Right temperature in the room, right lighting, right liquid intake, and right breathing pattern are extremely essential for all the remaining years. If that is true in the physical realm, how much more so in the spiritual.


The INTERMEDIATE FOLLOW-UP part of maturation is also vital.
For us, it comes in getting the new babe immediately in what we call a BASIC BELIEFS CLASS. Taught by me on Wednesday evenings, this class deals with the bare basics so necessary for the new believer to understand. There are seven sessions, and new believers can enter the following Wednesday after they’ve accepted Christ.

Titles of session are:
1. What Do We Believe About the Bible?
2. What Do We Believe About the Plan of Salvation?
3. What Do We Believe About Assurance of Salvation and Christian Growth?
4. What Do We Believe About the Church? Origin, Ordinances, Organization and Order?
5. What Do We Believe About Spiritual Gifts?
6. What Do We Believe About Christian Stewardship?
7. What Do We Believe Bout the Greatest Doctrines of the Bible?


These classes also double as a new members’ class.
Everyone desiring membership in our church is required to attend and complete all the sessions.
But whether the new believer takes membership with us or not (though they are urged to do this), the class provides for them the intermediate training and help they need for the first two months of their Christian walk. A study guide booklet is provided as a handy reference source for the future. The other plus about this class is the natural fellowship that is fostered for the new believer. Coming for all the consecutive Wednesday evenings brings them into contact with other new believers, and much needed fellowship in those early days of life takes place. This class is also taught Sunday mornings by another staff person during one of the three worship services, so two optional times are offered. We are discovering that our new converts that go through and complete the Basics course, as a rule, do not become spiritual casualties later.

Finally, there is the long term follow-up, also very essential last growth stops.
At this juncture, the new believer has two choices. He can either join a Home Fellowship Group, (if not already one), which meets weekly for Bible study, prayer, and worship, or he can apply for lay Witness Training that will take him another eleven weeks, and possibly, if he becomes a trainer, several years. Some opt to do both, especially single people with no family commitments.

We believe it is crucial for people to be in a Home Group.
Our groups have as their overall objectives the same purpose of the church. Since they are, in effect, a mini-church, a microcosm of the larger church, their goal is the fulfillment of the great commission also, which includes evangelism/maturation. They also serve as the prime fellowship catalyst for the new believer, a place where he can be related to ten or twelve others in a closer way then relating to over 5,000 on Sunday mornings. At this writing we have just over 80 groups scattered over the metro-area, but our plans call for some 500 groups in literally every neighborhood/development of our service area. These groups become the church “out there.” Since it is “out there” people need saving, healing, restoring, maturing, and pastoral care, we are pouring much more time and manpower into our home group ministry. We see on the horizon in the near future that new converts will become, in fact, the chief responsibility of a home group that meets in proximity to where that new believer lives. We see that ministry as the only real, workable, practical solution to long-range follow-up.

In addition to the above feeding strategy, as mentioned in the previous chapter, there needs to be a continuous, one-on-one, and one-on-two or three discipling. Not every believer is willing to be disciple by someone, but those who are willing and ready need the nomenclature to get started.
Men discipling men, women discipling women, youth discipling youth, there is a large network of disciplers in our body. This can never become a “program” or it loses its freshness and effectiveness. It really needs to be a way of life for those who will get involved. There are probably over 500 people either discipling or being disciple right now.


Our discipleship covers areas like ...
assurance of salvation,
the Word of God,
prayer,
witnessing,
fruit of the Spirit,
marriage,
home,
family,
time management,
leadership,
the church.
The Holy Spirit,
spiritual gifts,
as well as personal spiritual development and holiness.


Disciples meet weekly with their people and crank in a fair degree of accountability with things like books read, tapes heard, and verses memorized. The ultimate goal of every disciple is to produce a man of God who will be able to instruct others also.

One of the key verses in discipleship is:
As therefore you received Christ Jesus the |Lord, so live in Him. Rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Col. 2:6-7).

While outlines , study guides and a plethora of materials are  made available for all doing and receiving discipling , a great latitude is given because of the assumption that everyone is at a different place in his walk. We never see discipleship as a “course” to be completed, or a “class” to be prepared for, but rather as one individual pouring himself into another individual for the purpose of maturity , growth and reproduction.

Maturation also comes by special services provided throughout the year for groups. Our Woman -to Woman ministry, headed up by a full-time capable woman on our staff, provides in-depth feeling for over 400 women every Thursday, daytime and evening. Using the master teacher, then small group approach, this becomes yet another avenue through which women can grow. Our continual Men’s Growth Seminar, which meets every Wednesday morning at 6am till 7 a.m., provides over 100 men another opportunity to go deeper for God in their  maturing process. Taught by rotating staff, the men’s course of  study is planned out a year in advance. For men not attracted to small groups, or scared off by man-to-man discipling, this becomes their only source of weekly feeding besides expository preaching on Sundays.

Semi- annual Bible conferences have proven for us to be a great source of spiritual growth. Bringing in nationally known expositors for two or three night stints, we find our large auditorium packed beyond capacity for Word-hungry people. This has also proven to be a great evangelistic tool as non-believers who attend these special conferences are followed up and shared with. We have found by varying the theme each year, a well balanced diet of Bible  teaching can be offered. Most helpful topics for us have been the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit, the  Church, Marriage, the Cults, Stewardship, Commitment of Life and evangelism.

I believe every church needs a well-planned ,organized, effective system of follow-up in their maturation ministry. Its not enough to win people to Christ, then leave them to just look for others to win. We have a responsibility to “bring them along” in the faith until they become a reproducer themselves.

MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ 2 EVANGELISM

THIS MATERIAL BELOW
is a borrowed material
for DISCUSSION PURPOSES at
HIS LIFE DIVINITY SCHOOL

PART 2 of 10
borrowed from B.M.

------------

THE EVANGELISM FACTOR

I found it written in an old book someone had given me out of their personal library year ago:

“EVANGELIZE OR FOSSILIZE OR GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE WILL BECOME GOD’S FROZEN PEOPLE.”

Those lines have made an indelible impact on my life.

If  the truth were really known, about 85% of all American churches have lost the vision to evangelize. It’s reflected in budgets, buildings, schedules and a pre-occupation with “maintenance.”

Peter and John were told in Acts to stop preaching in Jesus name.
They couldn’t. the church today is commanded to preach the gospel and doesn’t.
In the first century, without the help of computers, slick brochures, copy machines, television, radio and newspapers the early church hemorrhaged with the gospel.
They were obsessed with winning the lost and planting new churches.
Until we return to that vision, evangelism will continue to be a lost concept.

Therefore, before dealing with methods, I believe that there are some biblical principles to which the 21st century church must give allegiance.

Examine them closely.



PRINCIPLE NO.1:
GOD INTENDS HIS CHURCH TO GROW!

He created it to grow, He designed it to grow, He equipped it to grow, He empowered it to grow.
And, grow it did. On the very first day of the church’s existence, 3000 people were baptized (Acts 2:41). From 3000, the church grew 5000 (Acts 4:4), then on to multitudes”  (Acts 5:14).
It is central to its nature to grow and rightly so. Its primary task, that of making disciples, necessitates growth. Church growth is not a means to an end, but the end to the means of evangelism.
Most evangelical churches  today are not growing, but rather making time. Their “no growth status is result of no evangelism. Some people are turned off by the talk of “numbers”. They somehow feel that to talk of numbers is unspiritual. Let me remind you that God believed in numbers.
(He named a book in the Old Testament  Numbers). All you  need to do is read through the book of Acts as shown earlier and you see numerical reports all the way through.

If it’s true that God wants “His banquet hall filled,” and that “He is not willing that any should perish,” then it seems only normal that the church should grow. Yet the condition that exist today is just the opposite. We have been subnormal for so long in evangelism, let a church return to “normality” and everyone think it’s abnormal.”

Today, growing and dynamic churches are singled out. Their stories appear in magazines, others make the trek to visit their campuses to find out how they did it, and often their pastors are constantly asked to speak at conferences and seminars on how it is being done. What a contrast to the original church we read about in Acts. No matter where they planted a church, it grew!
For your church to grow, among other things, your leadership must buy into the principle that truly God intends His church to grow. It is His will, His desire, yea, His command.



PRINCIPLE NO.2:
THE WORK OF EVANGELISM IS FOR THE WHOLE CHURCH,
NOT JUST A FEW “PROFESSIONALS”

Satan’s biggest deception for the church occurred when he convinced most of the church that the task of winning the lost belongs to the trained professionals. one of the fallacies of that deception is that the trained “professionals” represent only one half of 1% of the total membership of any given church! That plan is not of God. Proof of that is found in Acts 8:

And on that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, EXCEPT the apostles….. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word (Acts 8:1-4).

Did you catch the principle in these verse? When the persecution broke out, all the believers scattered, that is, all except the apostles. It was those who were scattered who did the preaching  and the evangelism, NOT THE “PROS” (apostles), who stayed put for some reason. It was the common “laity” that went everywhere preaching, because they saw it as their task, not the task of the professionals. I hope you notice it took some persecution to “scatter the saints”. That may be what it’s going to take to do the same in our generation.

It’s no wonder that during the first 250 years of the church’s existence, the entire Roman Empire was seriously affected and altered by “laymen’s movement”. It was the fastest growing movement in the history of civilization, all because each believer understood it was HIS responsibility to win his neighbor. That movement slowed to a crawl, however, when soon the idea was interjected that the “clergy” was alone equipped to fight all the battles for the church, including evangelism.



PRINCIPLE NO. 3:
EVANGELISM IS MEANT TO TAKE PLACE “OUT THERE”
INSTEAD OF “IN HERE”

This is a difficult principle for our western mind-set to absorb. We are a culture that likes “gathering”. Of course, there is nothing wrong with gatherings, specially church gatherings. A crowd assembles, someone preaches, an invitation is offered and a few people step out to receive Christ. While that is a good thing and certainly every time the Word is preached there needs to be the opportunity offered for the unsaved to accept Christ, the biblical pattern was so different. In the earlier quoted passage, with all the other information we are given in Acts, most of the public gatherings on Sunday were for worship, edification, equipping and fellowship, so the saints could go out during the week and let their light shine and their testimony be given. In other  words, there was the gathering and the “scattering” this balance enabled the church to take time for winning the lost and maturing the saints. Sunday services really should not be for the purpose of evangelizing, but edifying and equipping SO THAT  evangelism can take place in the market place, the neighborhood, the play place and the home through natural relationships. While there is certainly nothing wrong with mass evangelism, our world for the most part will be won by the one-on-one relationships developed by individual believers out there where they work and play.



PRINCIPLE NO. 4:
PEOPLE ARE LOST, DOOMED AND DAMNED APART
FROM JESUS CHRIST

I’m not sure much of the church really “buys in”  to that statement. The facts is that we live in an accommodating culture. For fear of being called narrow minded, much of evangelical Christianity has “graciously” taken in under their umbrella all kinds of philosophies and espousals of people. The early church in Acts marched across the world under the banner of the cross with a firm conviction that men are lost outside Jesus Christ. In fact, Peter’s words in Acts 4:12 gives us a clue as to the tone of the preaching in the area:

And there is salvation in no-one else, for these is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

That exclusive statement compels the church to peach conclusively and persuasively the gospel. Statisticians assure us that the world population is right at 5 billions. When you stop and consider that 3.5 billion of that figure do not know Christ, that is great motivation for present evangelism. When you stop and consider that 3.5 billion of that figure do not know Christ, that is great motivation for present evangelism. When you add to this the fact that religious groups such as Muslims are staging massive campaigns in America for converts, our motivation for holding up Jesus as the only way is greatly increased.

Recently in our city a little girl became lost. Within a matter of hours, large amounts of friends, relatives, neighbors, and just concerned people banded together organized themselves and began a massive search for the little lost girl. They were later joined by the many others who had heard of the incident on television. Before night over 1000 people had set aside normal activities of work, recreation and focused their entire energies on one objective, finding the little lost girl. Fortunately, just as the sun was setting , she was found, alone, crying, in a wooded area.  That group of people, heretofore unknown to each other, had one common goal and felt a camaraderie as they sought to fulfill that goal. If that many people are willing to inconvenience themselves over a physical life, surely the Church can concern and organize itself to seek, find and evangelize people who are lost for all eternity. Jesus made it clear what His mission…. To seek and save the lost. Until we acknowledge the blatant fact that apart from Jesus Christ men are doomed, and relegated to a devil’s hell for all eternity, not much will happen in the way of evangelism.

Jesus said in John 14:6,

I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, but by me.


What Jesus said is clear. Salvation can be found in no one else, no way else, nowhere else, except through Him. If we really believed that, it would totally revolutionize what we do in the way of evangelism from week to week.

Some has said that if you joined all the unsaved people in the world hand to hand, the circle would go around the earth 5 times and the line would grow 22 miles per day! That is staggering and points up the enormity of our task of sharing Jesus as the one and only answer to man’s estrangement.

Until the leadership of the local church acknowledges the reality of man’s lost position, not much will happen in the way of evangelism. Perhaps one of our problems is that we have lost the biblical meaning of “lostness”. In Luke 15 Jesus told 3 parables concerning lostness; He told about the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost boy. There is a common theme in that chapter we are prone to miss. It is that each and every lost item, including the lost son, was lost because it was out of relationship to the one and only person who could bring meaning, significance, and worth to it. The coin was not in the hand of the owner, and thus in a state of low or no worth. Its buying power (the very reason for which it was created) was nil. The sheep was outside the fold of its shepherd and thus was in danger. The boy was out of relationship with his father and thus had lost his sense of worth and value. To be “lost” doesn’t necessarily mean to be “bad” or “immoral” or “ungodly”, though lost people tend to fail into all of these things.

Biblically, lostness means to be out of relationship. In reality, God created man for the purpose of being in perfect relationship, and harmony with Him. Until that happens, it matters not how good or bad someone is, he is lost. I personally believe every local church needs to hear from the pulpit these words:

We believe that apart from Jesus Christ, man is eternally lost



PRINCIPLE NO. 5:
IT IS GOD WHO INITIATES SALVATION AND DRAWS PEOPLE TO HIM

We tend to forget that salvation always begins with God. Without attempting to reconcile the sovereignty of God and the free will of man, let the Word speak for itself:

Even as he chose us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Eph. 1:4).

Paul states an amazing truth here. Long before God even created the world, he chose us to be saved. Perhaps this is why Jesus said:

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:44).

‘In fact, as you read on in John 6, you will find these same words again expressed:

And he said, “This is why I told you, that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father” (John 6:65).

Before God and man can met in salvation, we who share the gospel must acknowledge the call of God on people’s lives. It is God who initiates our salvation. It is God who made the first move in creating us in the first place. It is God who moved again in the coming of Jesus Christ as the divine provision and remedy for sin. In his letter to the Romans, Paul said:

And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:6).

We usually don’t think of our salvation in terms of the call of God upon us. But I believe this is one of the most important principles of evangelism. When the church realizes that God has called people to be saved, and that we are the bearers of that call, it places a greatly needed urgency upon us. If we don’t announce the call of God to a broken and chaotic humanity, who will?



PRINCIPLE NO. 6:
GOD WILLS OUR SALVATION

Not only is His call upon us, it is His sovereign will that we be saved!

There is a lot of discussion about the will of God. Many are frantically trying to discern God’s will for their life… whom they will marry, where they will live, what is their profession to be, etc. Among many things that can be labeled God’s will in scripture, the most significant is man’s salvation. Who can forget the most quoted scripture?

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16)

Jesus made it clear that it’s the world God loves, the whole world, not a potion, not a particular race or culture, but the world. Truly the task of evangelism is cosmic. The great commission is still “all nations.” It transcends cultures, racial barriers, economic strata, and personalities. The cosmic desire of God to see the whole world saved is stressed in II Peter:

The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (II Pet. 3:9).

Jesus died for the world. And while we know some will reject salvation, it is the task of the church to make the gospel message known to the world, and in so doing, we are helping fulfill the divine will of God.

Paul made it clear what God’s desire for worldwide salvation:

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (I Tim. 2:3-4).

If it’s true, and it is, that it is God’s sovereign will that the world come to Christ, and if it’s further true that God has chosen the church to be the bearer of those unsearchable riches, it is clear that the church’s supreme task, if it would do the will of God, is evangelize.

No church can claim to be at the center of God’s will in its mission and not have on its front burner the objective of world wide evangelism. No church can say “We’re doing the will of God,” if great amounts of energy, large sums of money, and adequate time are not devoted to fulfillment of God’s evangelistic will.

That is why I believe, with a sense of regularity in every local church, the people need to hear “We believe it is the will of God for the world to be saved! And we intend to fulfill that will to the best of our ability.” The primary mission of Jesus is summed up for us in what He said at the outset of His ministry:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19).

Even before His birth, Jesus mission was announced by the angel;

She will bear a Son and you shall call Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

Jesus made clear His mission when He said;

For the Son of man came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10)

Contrary to popular opinion today, Jesus real mission in coming to this world was not to make this world a better place in which to live, it was not to improve living conditions ,it was not to make a better government. His mission was clearly to bring man back to God. This He accomplished by His death on the cross. Therefore the pattern is this. God wills our salvation, Jesus came to do the will of the Fater, Jesus accomplished the provision of our salvation by His death on the cross. It is the church’s task now to fulfill God’s will---man’s salvation.



PRINCIPLE NO. 7:
EFFECTIVE EVANGELISM IS DONE IN THE POWER OF GOD

Ours is the culture of the quick fix and fast results. I truly believe that much of the church’s attempt to evangelize the lost, has degenerated into little more than psychologizing and humanizing people. All kinds of gimmiks, tricks, plans, programs, strategies, manuals, films and flipcharts have been created to impress and woo the unsaved. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with dressing the old gospel up in new and shiny strategies, but unless witnessing is done in the power of God, it will never be truly effective.

Just before His ascension, Jesus gave His disciples the game plan to take their world for Him. It goes like this;
You are witnesses of these things; and behold I send the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the City until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:48-49).

This the disciples did. You read basically the same thing when the great commission is given again in Acts1.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses, in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8)

Notice again, “you shall receive power”, .In other words, Jesus gave them the cosmic task of discipling the world, but warned them not to start the task  until the power was there. Little is said today about witnessing in the power of the Holy Spirit. All through the Bible we see examples of “power meetings”. These are meetings where the Kingdom of God encounters the kingdom of evil. Of course one of the prime examples was when Elijah encountered 450 prophets of Baal. He witnessed the power of God and God honored his faith. Young David is another prime example of a power meeting between forces of God and the forces of evil when he stood against a giant on a human level, the odds were 1000 to 1 in favor of  Goliath. But David said in essence, “You come to me with spear, a sword and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord our God.”

David was the victor that day; not in his own power. When Jesus encountered the Gerasene demoniac, there was a cosmic encounter. It was conclusive. Jesus had invaded the world of the enemy and demons. He had gone to bttle and by God’s power won the victory.

Act 13 records the tense narrative concerning the proconsul, Segius Paulus, who had summoned Barnabas and Saul to hear the word of God. You will recall the Elymas, the magician, had interfered and withstood them as they tried to share with the Proconsul. The scripture says;

But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind and will not see the sun for a time “ (Acts 13:9-11).

The victory was clearly God’s on that day because the scripture later tell us that the Proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred. It further states that he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. It certainly isn’t coincidence that virtually every conversion that took place in Acts was proceeded by a manifestation of God’s power. Sometimes in the form of a healing, sometimes in the form of death, sometimes by a miracle. I believe the most practical way we can witness in the power of God today is to depend on the Holy Spirit for divine appointments and for holy boldness, for effective results.



PRINCIPLE NO.8:
THERE IS INHERENT POWER IN THE GOSPEL

 Close connected to principle 7, this principle relies on the built-in power of the spoken message itself. No one doubts the power of God, but we tend to forget there is power in the spoken message. In Genesis we are told that God spoke the world into creation. By the same token, there is a resident power in the life changing message of the cross. Romans 1:16 tell us;


For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who has faith.

The message that declares the atoning death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus has a built-in power of its own that is able to blow apart man’s self-sufficiency, his false confidence, and even Satan’s deception. God’s word is effective when spoken. That is the meaning of Isiah 55:11:

So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

Many times we are dependent on the suaveness of speech or the cleverness of the presentation or the speaker, or where what scripture comes where and how effectively we present the close, but I would remind you that the result in evangelism has little to do wi the quality of presentation. Proof of this is that Paul preached very rationally and academically in Athens and the converts were few. On the other hand, he preached by the power of God at Corinth, and many responded. In reflecting on that later, Paul reminded the Corinthians:
When I came to you brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words of wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and much fear and trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God (I Cor. 2:1-5)

Our western mind-set leaves little room for God to operate with His power in the task of evangelism. Our confidence too many times has been in the setting of what is presented the suaveness of the presenter, and the rational way in which it is presented. We conclude that an intelligent message, presented in an intelligent way, to an intelligent person, by an intelligent person, should bring an intelligent affirmative result. Of course, no one would even suggest we be in any way sloppy, or slip-shod in the way we share Christ. But in our own church, I have seen people without a great I.Q., whose memories were bad, “slaughter” the gospel presentation, yet at the close the people they shared with came to faith in Christ! So, it’s not only the power of God working in and on the situation, but the power of message which is shared.



PRINCIPLE NO. 9:
THE CHURCH IS CHARGED WITH THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EQUIPPING THE SAINTS IN EVANGELISM

We learned long ago that if the saints are going to do the work of evangelism, they must be trained in the work of evangelism. That is why it is absolutely essential that there be in every church, regardless of size, an on-going training program to equip saints who are willing in the work of evangelism. I learned this secret in 1974 when I went through the Lay Witness Training Program at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderadale, Florida. I came home, took two people, committed them to 18 weeks of discipling and training, took them out each Tuesday evening where they watched me present the very gospel outline they were learning. God honored that “pilot” project by having almost half of the people we called on during that period accept Christ right in front of the eyes of my two trainees! In this program, evangelism is more “caught” than “taught.” At the end of the training program, the three of us each took two more trainees and repeated the process. At the end of that term there were now nine of us each taking two more recruits and repeating the whole process. Before very many years, either as “trainees” or “trainers.” Today, we conduct three 11-week sessions per year including on the job training. Over 900 people have been trained and graduated from the training. Many of those are no longer in the on-going program, some have moved to other cities, and some have dropped out altogether. But the important thing is that we are seeking to be obedient to the scriptures:

And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Eph. 4:11-12).

“. . . to equip the saints for the work of the ministry . . .”That’s the key. Every pastor’s task is one of equipping, training, coaching, leading. Many pastors have not yet learned that God has called them to equip God’s people God’s tasks. Theirs is no the job of DOING all the tasks, but equipping others to do them as they come alongside and do them with them.

I have found the continual use of the Lay Witness Training program, year in and year out, provided the means of fulfilling our equipping role. Here are some simple rules in using any kind of evangelism training:

1. The preacher must not only endorse, but be involved in the training himself. He can never ask his people to do what he himself won’t this is modeling that is inescapable to him.
2. Be selective. Recruit by name. Invite handpicked people to an explanation meeting where the whole training is explained, then have them sign up at the meeting, for the training will start in two to three weeks.
3. Make sure recruits know that training begins on this date and ends on that date. Be specific.
4. Have high expectations. Make sure recruits understand the demands and rigor of the training.
5. Inspect! During training for eleven weeks, there is a weekly exam before each class. We learned that you don’t get what you expect, but only what you inspect.
6. Establish authority in the training process. Trainees must know who is in charge. Except for unusually large churches, the preaching minister himself should be in charge.
7. Have a graduation time with diploma and ceremonies, and offer graduating trainees the opportunity to become a trainer, thus, fulfilling the II Tim. 2:1-2 principle.
8. Make sure all trainees get to see the gospel presented on a call at least 70% of the time.
9. Conduct a final written and oral exam as a condition for completion.
10. Make sure graduates are also acknowledged in the worship service.

Many people ask us many times if this is the only kind of evangelism that is valid in the local church. Of course there are other valid modes of evangelizing, including training in lifestyle evangelism, coffee cup evangelism, home cell group evangelism, and cold turkey door-to-door evangelism. I sincerely believe, however, that the Lay Witness Training form of evangelistic outreach is the most effective over the long haul; mainly because it raises up an army of trained witnesses who, in or out of a program, will have the tools to witness and train others to witness.

Every local church needs an objective, a goal, and a game plan of how to get there always before them in evangelism. It needs a statement that says, “WE PLAN TO TAKE OUR COUNTY FOR JESUS CHRIST BY____________. THIS IS HOW WE PLAN TO DO IT!” Then and only then will your church, and your community, really know you are serious about your existence as a church.

MOVEMENT THINKING at DIVINITY SCHOOL _ part 1 VISION

THIS MATERIAL BELOW
is a borrowed material
for DISCUSSION PURPOSES at
HIS LIFE DIVINITY SCHOOL
3rd SEMESTER 2018
oct nov dec NIGHT EDITION

PART 1 of 10
borrowed from B.M.

------------

INTRODUCTION

With a proliferation of books and conferences on church growth, why another book?
While we who pastor churches are deeply indebted to those church growth scientists who have shown us how to measure growth, predict growth, plan for growth, and organize for growth, I think it needs to be remembered that church growth is a consequence, not a means to an end. It is the result of the church truly “being” the church, in worship, witness and word. The abundant growth reports in Acts are actually reports stating normal behavior of normal churches. If such reports occurred in our day, such as 3000 being saved in one day from one sermon in one church, you can bet that church would be written up in every religious journal, and dubbed as “abnormal”. We don’t have normal results today because in most cases we are not dealing with a normal church. I am convinced when the 20th century church resumes “normal” behavior, the kind we read about in Acts, we will see “normal” result again (which the watching community would surely call abnormal!)

In the following pages, you will read principles gleaned from experiences.
Experientialism that isn’t tied to scripture is little more than sugar-coated subjectivism.
These principles were “stumbled on to” by divine providence. Most of them I discovered over years of trial and error. I call them Biblical pragmatics. They work because they are biblically based, not because they are a new and unique technique.

Every church growth student must remember that it’s Jesus who builds His church. He said, in fact, “. . . I will build my church. “He is still in the building business where He finds people who are willing to work with and under Him, using all the wherewithal He’s provided. It’s then the church grows. It must grow, it can do nothing but grow.

In the words of a restaurant owner when asked why his business had doubled, tripled, and quadrupled; “It has to long as we stick to our original objective, feeding hungry people good food.”

This is the day of large audiences. It is a day of always equating crowds with success.
While no right thinking person is naïve enough to believe that is true, we need to be careful about running numbers down. I’ve discovered that in church circles, those that are running numbers down usually aren’t running any up! God is concerned with numbers, He even named a book in the Bible by that name. you can’t read the book of Acts without being convinced that God is interested in numbers. It speaks of the eleven, the 120, 3000 being saved, then 5000, then multitudes. It goes from people being “added” to the number of disciples, to being “multiplied.” With over 5 billion on planet earth, and only a third or less knowing Christ, we know numerically what we must do.

This book is also for those who have met discouragement in non-growing churches.
Hopefully, as ministers and leaders face the exaltation of tradition at the price of maintenance in the local church, these chapters will be an encouragement that you really can break through the wall of provincialism and stagnant faith. God created the church to grow, He planned it to grow, He designed it to grow, He empowered it with supernatural power so it would grow. So the only way it won’t grow is if we stop it from growing by failing to honor those inviolable principles God set in motion. Happy sailing through these pages. God has never destined every church to be a church of three, five, or ten thousand, but He has destined every church to grow. Good growth to you.


THE VISION FACTOR

I have a file folder in my left hand desk drawer labeled “Dreams and Visions”. Into that file I drop dreams and visions from time to time. About once a month I clean out the ones that were “imaginations of my own mind” and pitch them in the trash. The others stay, some become reality, others lie there until their time comes. Every true vision awaits its time.
Thousands of churches struggle from week to week with no vision and no dream for the future.
They plod along, RE-acting to what comes instead of ACTing so as to dictate what comes. Unfortunately, many churches of all sizes major in mediocrity and specialize in status-quo due to lack of vision. The bible says:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. . . (Joel 2:28) 

Peter quoted this verse on the day of Pentecost when the very first church was born. It’s no wonder it was born in power and dynamism. Historically, God has consistently worked through a visionary people who crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, who marched around Jericho seven times, who went into promised land and conquered.

What exactly is a visionary church?
What are the marks of a visionary body of believers?


A VISIONARY CHURCH
IS A
POWER CONSCIOUS CHURCH

The church was born in power!
The sound of a mighty rushing wind set the stage .it’s not just coincidental that the full pouring out of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church went hand in hand. It was designed that way. Not only born in power, it grew in power. It conquered in power. It met opposition in power. It was evident that the church of the first century maneuvered its way  across Asia with a supernatural force that made Rome sit up and take notice. Without the benefit of a computer, a copy machine, a telephone, a video recorder or a word processor, the church grew because of her reliance on God’s power, poured out through the Holy Spirit. Phrases like this occur all through the book of Acts:

And with great power  the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all (Acts 4:33).

Their power penetrated paganism, healed the sick, raised the dead, drove out demons, and shook whole cities for the gospel.

The 20th century church needs desperately a recovery of power. God never intended the church to rub by sharp, Madison avenue techniques with slick brochures and suave lines, but by the power of God! A man on death row was walking toward the electric chair for his execution. All appeals had failed, this was the final walk. He walked past other prisoners whom he knew, and each of them had a farewell word for him. One said “ Goodbye Joe.” Another said, “Keep your chin up.” Still another said, “Take it on the chin, Joe.” But one said , “MORE POWER TO YOU, JOE.” Obviously this wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say to someone headed for 300 volts of electricity, but it is appropriate for God to say to His church….MORE POWER TO YOU!


A VISIONARY CHURCH
IS A
WITNESSING CHURCH


Acts 1:8 says, “Yous shall be my witnesses.” It didn’t say, “Will you be my witnesses?”
Witnessing was not an option in the early church. ”…..now those who  were scattered went everywhere preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). O, for a rediscovery of witnessing for the church today. Most churches have a bad case of “inwarditis.” Some call it “spiritual navel-gazing.” It is the inward look syndrome, where outreach is not in vogue anymore. If you examine the activity calendar of most local churches today, you’ll discover that very little activity is given over to witnessing, sharing Christ with the unregenerate world. Our presentation perspective is at a very low ebb. Yet churches today that are thriving, growing and expanding rapidly are churches that have caught the vision of outreach. There is entirely too much too much self-satisfaction with the status-quo in many churches. God has called us to witness!! The church exists to witness, it’s the way God planned for the church to grow and expand!


A VISIONARY CHURCH
IS A
GIVING CHURCH

To give or not to give….that was never the question in the early church. There was a spontaneity in giving that caused  the church to never lack funds to do God’s work. If you want to know what the tone was in this area, listen:

….and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common (Acts 4:32)

Also:

….there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses, sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostle’s feet (Acts 4:34:35).

Though a later chapter will deal more in detail about this, suffice it to say here that today, where churches are growing rapidly and doing great things for God, if you look behind the scenes, you will see sacrificial giving on a great scale.


A VISIONARY CHURCH WILL
BE A
GROWING CHURCH


I think it is a point of interest that the very first church God brought into  existence was a large church. It had 3000 baptized in one day! That’s growth! Later, they simply counted them by referring to them as “multitudes”. Let me ask you a pointed question. How big do you visualize your church becoming? 400? 800? 1000? 3000? 8000? 10,000? Are you believing God for a large church? In some quarters, “large church” is a naughty word. Some feel if it is a large church, it must be doctrinally impure or extremely worldly. Neither is necessarily true. It may be that it’s large because a little band of believers had a vision for largeness and great numbers. I don’t think God is concerned with the SIZE of any church as long as it’s a growing church. A large church that isn’t growing is just as much an abomination to the Lord as a small church that isn’t growing. God intended  the church to grow. He created it to grow, designed it to grow, equipped it to grow, empowered it to grow, SO IT OUGHT TO GROW…unless we stop it. Yet isn’t it strange , when a church does grow consistently and rapidly, we stand in awe! When I came to Overlake, it was a brand new church with only about 85 people. In  18 years it has grown to a membership of over 5,000. Some people stand back and say, “That’s just incredible!” in reality, it’s really sub normal! It should have grown to be a church of nearly 20,000 or 40,000. The church of Jesus Christ has been sub-normal for so long, let it approximate normality and everyone thinks it’s abnormal! Look at the growth progress reports in Acts. They are to say the least , quite impressive.

So those who received His word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers and fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles (Acts 2:41-43).

And they arrested them and put them  in custody until the morrow, for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the word believed and the number of men came to about five thousand (Acts 4:3-4).
And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith (Acts 6:7).

And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said to Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did. For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed (Acts 8:6-7)

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up; and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it was multiplied (Acts 9:31)

And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him and they turned to the Lord (Acts 9:35).

And it became known throughout all Joppa and many believed in the Lord (Acts 9:42).
And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number that believed turned to the Lord (Acts 11:21).

But the word of God grew and multiplied (Acts 12:24).

Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord (Acts 13:12)

And they said, “Believed in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. You and your household.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds and he was baptized at once with all his family. Then he brought them up at once into his house and set food before them; and he rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God (Acts 16:31-34).

So the word of the Lord grew and prevailed mightily (Acts 19:20)

In your vision of a great church, make sure you visualize a potentially large church. believe God for something BIG! But … some would object, “you’re just in the numbers game.”  God certainly isn’t ashamed of numbers, is He? You read, as above, about numbers in Acts, first 11, then 120, then 3000, then 5000, then multitudes. While the work of church growth is with God, I believe God wants us to have a vision for a mighty church.

How do you translate all this into practical, workable strategy? We learned in the early years of our church’s existence that we had to be headed someplace, there had to be objective, goals, targets. Our commission is to disciple the world! Then, what is our world strategy? What is our national strategy? What is our regional strategy? Our state strategy? Our local area strategy? So we went to work. At this writing, a half million dollars is being given for world missions every year. We are on track to plant a new congregation every other year, not just in the local area, but in the national area where population shifts are going. We project that in three more years, we’ll be giving over $1 million to missions alone! We keep a 10-year updated plan at all times that projects budgets, attendance, conversions, new churches, staff, facilities, ministries, etc.

I have insisted that every pastoral/staff person take one day a month for prayer, fasting, envisioning and meditation. I’ve asked them to dreams and seek God’s face for the future to their ministry in this body. The results have been phenomenal! not all dreams fly, nor are all visions from God, but some are. We don’t even know sometimes which are and which aren’t until we have tried to implement them. Their confirmation often comes at that time when they make it or don’t.

We hold at least two staff/ elder retreats per year just for the purpose of further dreaming and planning. No dream is a bad dream in the initial sharing of ideas, visions, and plans. These sessions have been extremely fruitful and up building. It’s here that web discover what the spirit wants for this body. It doesn’t come quickly, but slowly as we wait upon the Lord.

If the leadership has no vision for the future, the local church will have no future! That will be discussed more in a later chapter. Now, a word of warning to the wise! Ever-present in every church are vision-dampers. They come in the form of people, statements, inuedos, attitudes, and traditions. Here are a few “vision-dampers” you’ll need to watch for.
“The future is God’s business, not ours”.

That sounds very spiritual, and proponents of that often quote Jesus’ sermon on the mount that says, “Let the day’s own  trouble be sufficient for the day” (Matt. 6:34). These people would have you believe that it’s not very spiritual to dream, plan, or be visionary about the future. And, they are right if WE are the ones alone who put together the future and then try to drum up support from God and Man for OUR plans! But being visionary is really an effort on our part to find out what God has in mind for the future, and then get in on it. Jesus also told a very pointed parable about a man who started to build, and didn’t first sit down and count the cost. The meaning of that is that we must plan. If we fail to plan, we plan to fail.

“What’s going to cost”

Somebody will always ask that question when visionaries meet and make bold plans for the future. It’s almost like the cost factor is the key determining factor. We are learning not to ask,
“What’s going to cost” but rather, “Is it a great thing for God?” If it’s a great thing for God, Whatever it will cost is not too much. If it’s not a great thing for God, and was free, it costs too much! For some reason, there will always be someone who constantly says, “Can we afford it?” In 1974 we needed busses to pick up scores of kids in our drawing area whose parents attended church nowhere. The need could not have come at a worse time financially. We were strapped, and every dime was designated. But in a move of faith, one of our men said, “Let’s forget what it will cost and concentrate on God’s ability to provide and I move we buy two second-hand busses to begin with!” It passed, we did it, and a donor paid for the first bus completely! For a few years four busses transported some two hundred children in to Sunday school, some of whom are grown, married, and holding positions of service in the church today! Remember, if it’s a great thing for God and helping to fulfill the great commission, the cost is in occidental!

“We never did it that way before!”

These have been called the 7 last words of church. And well they may be! This is one of the most subtle of all vision-damper. When I think of this statement, I will always think of God’s word to Israel, “Behold, I am doing a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it” (Isa.43:19)? God will only do new things where new things are welcome. God’s message is unchangeable, but ways to present it are changed everyday. A  church whose leadership has taught the people to expect new and vital workings of God are growing today.

I have made a habit of asking preachers and people when I visit a church, “What are your future plans for taking your country for Christ?” Some of the looks I get would bring an instant freeze! By far, most pastors, church leaders and others have made no plans for tomorrow. They’ve entertained no vision, dreamed no dreams and few if any plans for the future.

Someone once said that we’ve been subnormal for so long, if a church became normal, most people would think it abnormal! Assuming that the “normal” church we read about in the Bible was a visionary church, we desperately need to seek to be a “normal” church.

Put the following monologue in your think tank and let it germinate.

Have you ever noticed the difference between subnormal churches are frozen together; normal churches move by the Spirit, subnormal churches creep by committees; normal churches do it now, subnormal churches just table the motion; normal churches preach convulsively, subnormal churches lecture calmly; normal churches double their budgets, subnormal  churches double their meetings; normal churches evangelize subnormal churches fossilize; normal churches bulges! Normal churches hemorrhage subnormal churches only bleed; normal churches cross Red Seas on dry ground, subnormal churches jump mud puddles and get wet; normal churches are fishers of men, subnormal churches keep aquariums; normal churches multiply, subnormal churches only divide; normal churches are run by God’s power, subnormal churches manufacture their own; normal churches stay in orbit, subnormal churches stay on the launching pad; normal churches make much dust, subnormal churches sweep it under the rug; normal churches reach for the moon, subnormal churches try for the street lights; normal churches attempt the impossible, subnormal churches debate over the impossible!

Normal churches will be raptured by Christ!
Subnormal churches will be ruptured by rot!     

END of PART 1
VISION