Saturday or Sunday Nights?

I’m convinced it takes two main things to grow a church, and one of them starts with me, and the other I can help along.

1. Passion for Christ.
That on-fire passion for your faith, the complete belief in God, the quickness to pray and to believe in answers to that prayer. I feel like a spiritually hired gun that God sends to a certain place to build up His body. As a pastor, people feed off of my attitude, and my fire. If it’s down, so the church goes. Only a few people are allowed to see me doubt. Truth is though, I should doubt and get discouraged far less often than I do. I’m working on it, but you can’t just lean on your “on-fire” friends when you are a pastor. You have to be the “on-fire” friend. If I learn anything from this, it should be how to trust and believe in God regardless of anything.

Sounds simple now, but it’s not so easy to get used to. Wish I could go back and start over in many ways. But all past failings aside, I’ve learned what Paul was talking about when he told Timothy to “fan into flame” the gifts he had been given. Pastors, we gotta believe and trust God. We are truly putting ourselves out there on display every day. Quite the spectacle we must be.

2. Friendships in the Church. One way to do this in my mind, is to simply have services where people can meet and mingle and make friends. Other than that, we encourage it etc… but the services are a big tool. Usually more effective than a dinner, or an activity because visitors rarely show up to those.

So I looked into a Saturday night service. It was recommended by a Baptist association that any service on Saturday needs to have lots of effort and lots of work put into it to make it top notch from day one. Otherwise, people won’t give up their Saturday night hour.

A church planter mentioned how Saturday services sound good on paper, but in real life, it’s just flat out hard to get people to take time on a Saturday night to go to church. The most difficult thing isn’t necessarily the visitors, but the church members who we would be asking to help out on Saturday, who already help and minister on Sunday.

Can you say burn-out?

So many contemporary churches, okay at least 3 I know of, are simply using Sunday night, and having a big service in the evening. Some churches do the same service at night that they did in the morning. So these services are a lot bigger and more involved than the typical Bible study and a few hymns many older churches do on Sunday night. These contemporary churches are attracting visitors at night as well as the morning.

I think they’re on the right track. Sunday works better.

So we’re considering going from a church with 2 morning services, to a church with one service on Sunday morning, and the same service on Sunday night, -complete with the praise and worship teams, the communion, the offering, the whole ball of wax. One service in the morning, one at night.

Benefits? We’d have the one service feel on Sunday morning which gives us lots of fellowship and feeling of having more people. The workers who do children’s ministry and would miss the first morning service, would be able to attend the evening service. People who work would be able to attend one of the services, whichever fits their schedule. Everyone would be able to be involved in Sunday School and Bible studies before the service in the morning. And a few other things…

I’m not sure if would preach the same sermon both times though. Maybe different sermons? Like I said, we’re just thinking right now.

Succeeding and Winning

Ah, my favorite football team, the Dallas Cowboys, lost another big game. They are very good at winning the games everyone expects them to win, and losing the big games. The important ones. Frustrating when it’s your team. After awhile, you no longer believe they’ll win and you spend most of the time waiting for something bad to happen. You just know they’ll throw an interception or give up a big play and lose. Any moment now….

unfortunately, the Cowboys usually don’t disappoint my low expectations.

Now the fact is, most people have low expectations for themselves and for their hopes and dreams too.

Did you know God actually says a lot about this in the Bible? There are some differences between the Bible and the latest self-help guru though. But both result in the same thing: Enjoying life, winning at life, and reaching your goals and dreams.

A guru might tell you to believe in yourself.
The Bible would tell you to believe in God.

A guru might tell you to decide what you really want out of life and go get it.
The Bible says God already knows what you want, but to submit your desires and plans to Him. In other words, give God your obedience and love, and God will give you the desires of your heart in return.

The Bible also says God knows what you really want better than even you do. He’ll put things in your life that will blow you away, that you never even thought of.

The Bible even makes it clear that God believes in you. Often, more than you believe in yourself.

Guru’s say we need to learn from our mistakes and keep going.
The Bible says we need to listen to what God may be telling us when things go wrong, or when we fail, and remember we have a reward in eternity that makes all the tough times worth it.

Guru’s always end up building our SELF up.
The Bible says there is something bigger than our SELF, but that something loves us as His own child.

Now, someone please pass this on to my favorite sports team. They need it.

God opened a door for us this week

We’ve been doing a radio show for awhile now, -a 30 minute Christian talk show on secular radio. It’s funny, hopefully insightful, and is designed to make you think without being tooooo serious. A part of the show is a short produced segment that tackles a big subject in an entertaining, faced paced couple of minutes. They’ve turned out pretty good and the radio station we work with asked if they could throw those 3 minute-ish bits on the air during their Sunday morning programming. No charge. As a way to help promote the main show which airs on Saturday nights. Understand radio stations don’t just give away time, that’s what they sell.

Anyway, I gotta tell ya, those 3 minute bits take awhile to put together, but if stations find them as entertaining and fun as we do, then maybe God is using them to make even more people think. Listen here. Spend a moment in the Cross Roads. (about 3 minutes usually, the Christmas one is 5:06 and is the only really serious one)

The Seven Seals are Seven Forces

Okay, prophecy geeks, here ya go: (non-prophecy geeks can ignore this)

Revelation 6 – all of these forces have been around forever, but here they seem to be unleashed uncontrollably.

Seal 1 – Most people think it’s the “spirit of the Anti-Christ”… they’re probably right. The imagery fits the idea of a leader.

Seal 2 – war, given power to take peace from the earth. Easy one.

Seal 3 - economic collapse (famine, shortages, etc….) It’s not just one thing, but shortages and poverty in buying the basic needs of existence. That’s what it literally shows I’m not stretching or going out on a limb here.

Seal 4 – Death. Kills one-fourth of the earth by war, famine, plague, and the wild beasts of the earth. This gives the indication of how severe the previous seals are in relation to the “normal” effects of wars or famines or disease or “wild beasts.” This is why I say the Seals are normal world-wide forces, but they seem to be unleashed to a level we have never seen.

Seal 5 – Persecution of believers. To be consistent, this would have to be a level of persecution that would be most severe.

Seal 6 – A tough one to figure out. My guess? The judgments of God. It is quite literally a picture of the “Day of the Lord” which is seen over and over again in the Old Testament books.

Seal 7- Half an hour of silence, and then the Trumpet judgments (World-wide destructive judgments that would take an all-out nuclear war or a collision of with a large asteroid for us to comprehend fully. They are that far-reaching.)

It seems that the “Seals” are forces God unleashes in the last days. The very last days. Forces that throughout history we could say He has restrained. Hitler was defeated. The US and USSR never actually fired their tens of thousands of nukes at each other. Etc…

In the end it seems, all the restraints are off.

What is the half hour of silence? In my opinion, the period when God has stepped back from protecting the world, and yet withholds His own judgments, (the Trumpets and later the Bowls)

Or, the first 3 1/2 years give or take, of the “Tribulation” for you prophecy geeks.

I figured something out in the book of Revelation …. I think

Now, I’ve studied the book of Revelation for a long time, and I get interested in stuff like that. However, I know a lot of other people are kinda iffy on it, so I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of detailed info here, but… I figured out something I’ve not really understood before.

When this detail fits with that one, and suddenly a common sense question arises in my brain and …. there it is. I feel like the Holy Spirit, or the general term “God” often helps me understand difficult questions or difficult passages of the Bible by asking me simple questions like:

“What does it say?”

“What does THAT mean?”

Almost like a teacher who wants the student to discover the answer himself and is rewarded with the light that goes on in the pupil’s eyes when the answer clicks into place. If God was watching the other night, and of course He was, I’d like to think He got the same smile on His face that a teacher gets.

Because I get it now.

Iran Went Nuclear Today

Also found out here that the United States has been building up its forces in the region. They must have been doing that quietly.

Does this mean the end of the world? Nah. Well. Maybe.

Learning Stuff

When you pray crazy things like “God please grow our church” you don’t tend to think of all the things God has to prepare in you before you can grow. It would be like praying “God, please let me win the golf tournament.” And then God responds by giving you golf lessons.

What? I’ve actually got to learn this stuff? Why can’t you just do it for me??

The other day my 4 year old son wouldn’t put his arms through his shirt himself because he wanted me to do it. I had already put the shirt over his head, but he refused to put his arms through the holes….

So I left him on the floor, said, he had to do it, and walked away. He cried. He threw a fit. He was mad at me for awhile, but he did eventually put his arms through. Now of course, I want him to learn to dress himself, but he wants me to do it for him. If I always do it for him, when is he ever going to grow up?

It’s not much different for me and you when it comes to “growing the church.” God wants to teach me to be a better preacher, you to be a better member / leader / teacher / deacon / whatever… He COULD do it all for us, but then when would we ever grow up?

Short Memory & Time Stopping Moment

Yesterday I went to see a teenager who had run into some trouble, was really struggling with school, and had dropped away some from church and youth group. Not completely by choice, he wasn’t always able to get to church or youth group, and like a lot of people, he struggled against the image everyone else had already formed about him in their own minds. Not a good one.

I’m a little lucky. I didn’t really know him much before I met him at church, before God started working in his life. I don’t know exactly what he was like before or all the bad things he might have done before. And I don’t care.

I really don’t. Because I can see a million reasons why Jesus loves this guy, and appreciate how God made him in the first place. You see, people are God’s creation. He made them that way. And every single one of us has something beautiful and awesome about us that God has given us as gifts. So I don’t care what’s happened in the past, I just know what God can do with a person in the future, and that my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Aren’t you glad God doesn’t remember our sins, even when the rest of the community will never forget?

Don’t focus on the past sins, and the obvious shortcomings. See people for who Christ made them to be and who they can become in Jesus. Help them get there, don’t just remind them where they’ve been.

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Oh yeah I had one of those moments last night that time seemed to freeze up.

Ever been in a Bible Study or reading the Bible while someone else was teaching and suddenly, a verse jumps out at you that really has nothing to do with the lesson, but everything to do with YOU?

That happened to me last night and I was floored. Kinda like the Holy Spirit, right in the middle of the discussion whispered in my ear and said “See that verse? See that passage? Sound familiar?”

No one else knew but me.

Amazing How Much You Learn through Difficulties

It’s been coming up in conversations all week: The idea that for something to grow you have to put it under some sort of stress. If you want bigger muscles, you must break them down by lifting weights. If you want to get in good shape, you must wear yourself out regularly. And even plants will grow faster if the sunlight is blocked from them, as they attempt to find it and survive.

We grow when we’re challenged, when things don’t come easily, and it’s not a huge amount of fun all the time. And likewise, if you pray for your church to grow in numbers, don’t be surprised if things get stressful. There are some lessons God wants to teach us, before He will let us grow. Or even, before we can.

If God had allowed our church to explode immediately when we asked, we may have thought it was because of our great programs, or the popularity of this person or that one. Truth is, God has taught us a lot as He prepares us for more. For one, I know it’s not programs and schedules at a church that truly make the difference.

It is, among other things, two very important ingredients:

Passion for your faith and life in Jesus Christ. People want to be around a church with people who are “on fire.” I want to be around those people! People are searching for something real, and a church that is focused on the reality and power of Jesus, who cannot talk with each other for 5 minutes before God and faith come into the conversation…. well that attracts people, and gives church a “wow” factor that cannot be produced with a video projector.

And community. Community is the strong bond of friendship we feel with so many people that we look forward to seeing on a Church night, and call occasionally during the week. It’s the hugs and the prayers yes, but also the accountability, and the loving one another despite our faults.

Put those two ingredients in your church and stand back.