These are my up and coming messages for this next week.
The idea of me sharing these is to receive your feedback and input...
So comment away!
Leaders Life Group:
We are all ministers... pastors. What does pastoring your life group members look like.
Who has been your best picture of a 'pastor' in action and why? How did it make you feel?
Elevate:
Why is it that when you decide to go hard out for God... life seems to go to pieces?
Look at the life of Joseph and how he moved from the dream to slavery (and betrayal) to Jail (and isolation) and eventually to fulfillment of the dream.
The going to custard is a 'good' thing! A look at why and how to stay sane I suppose.
How have you grown from difficult times? What challenges have you faced after God has given you a dream?
SHAPE:
The why behind the expectations we have for our leaders...
There certainly is a big demand that I make of the leaders in CE & Elevate. Am I going overboard... or is there some good reason to all of this?
There is no higher calling or greater investment that we can make than investing into the lives of people... but there is a cost involved.
What is reasonable and unreasonable to expect from the wonderful volunteers in church life?
7pm
Grace... but not as you know it!
We mostly think of Grace as God not squishing us for being sooo sinful.
I want to look at a side of Grace that we have become ignorant.
I believe that this message could be the most significant message that I will share this year!
Living the Christian life is just plain difficult! How do we do it? How can we change?
I believe that Philip 2:12-13 holds the key!
I believe we need to stop trying to change...
PS: I will be blogging soon the 3rd part of my giving feedback series... keep a look out for it... its going to be a boomer!
I look forward to your comments : )
Helping People Make Church Home
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I read a fantatsic post from Ps James Macphersons blog that I just know
will help you in building your youth ministry:
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4 comments:
Hey bro, great thoughts.
For the elevate message, one of the things I've struggled with most with the dream God has given me has been trying to work out how I can get there from where I am now.
It's an incredible thing to have a dream, but its another thing to work out (with God's help) the day by day steps it will require to get there as I can't go and fulfill it immediately but I can't just sit around waiting for it to happen.
The other one is the SHAPE message.
Great thoughts and I definitely agree. I find it difficult with the way I lead, trying to find the balance between not making church a 'chore' for people, constantly being asked to do things so much they can't enjoy life and other things. Balanced with the things of getting on people's backs for stuffing around and being willing to pay the sacrifice.
Some people fall far too far on one side or the other but a balance between the two is important. How and where do you find it?
Hope those make sense,
Take care :)
Rhys
Hey Clive,
So good to see an 'up and coming' post, been a while =)
Leaders Lifegroups:
Pastoring is a pet subject for me so i'll focus on one aspect. Knowing when to pass things on is probably one of the most important ways we can pastor our lifegroups. Often leaders will keep information to themselves about people and try to carry everyones burdens or do the opposite and not pass on info but also not do anything to help. Aimee taught me a lot in this regard, yes confidentiality is important but we also have a responsibility to ourselves. Learning to ask advice and then pass people up to more experienced pastors in the church is a key aspect of pastoring our groups.
Elevate:
Rhys, in regards to the dream thing and day to day steps I've actually had the opposite. I was too scared to dream big and my first dream was tiny but it scared the heck out of me! I started working towards it and that started to make sense and then my dream grew bigger, I started expanding my steps, and now its just got HUGE (ask me about it someday Clive!!!), I've always been able to see the steps that I can do today though. Not necessarily the whole journey but definitely todays steps and the next milestone up ahead.
Clive, my biggest challenge has always been my self worth. I always struggled with seeing myself as 'good enough' or worthy of a big dream and God's trust(I know NOW its not about that at all and besides God's taught me all about His value of me so now I'm quite happy really). So when the challenges come the temptation is to see them as guidance to stop and as confirmation that I'm just being a tall poppy - rather than challenges to grow and stretch.
Shape:
Yes the demand is huge but its not unreasonable. The war is won but the battles not over and apathy and self-indulgment is rife - we have no concept really of what commitment is in NZ. For me I got way way too overcommitted coming in to leadership and so I have had to learn to start to balance all aspects of my life. Far better to learn it now than when we have families and dont have the skills we need to keep God and church a priority.
A lot of these things asked of us are things that, once in place, naturally fit into our lives anyway such as phone calls and meetings and coming to prayer etc. Its not as if we have to work on them all at once either - making a couple a habit and then a few more etc builds them in without huge sacrifice. You get out what you put in at the end of the day. To be honest its more the stretching beyond our comfort zones that we struggle with and its something we need to learn to love (speaks a convert)!
Yes I do write essays - its habit from BCNZ!
Cat
Oops one more thing:
Trying to change means we are exerting our will - sooner or later the cracks start to show, even if only its pride that we changed ourselves!
I've found through experience that change in character comes when I focus on God and my relationship with Him. I turn around 6 months later and realise that most of what I was struggling to change and gave up on has sorted 'itself' out. Check out U2's song 'Grace' its my current fave
luv me
I'm looking forward to that 7pm message! I agree that grace is often missunderstood. I'm sure I don't understand it myself.
I believe we need to stop trying to change...
That doesn't sound like someone who practices kaizan!
I can't wait...
BTW: I just updated my blog with a post called "A Seed and A Journey" would love you to swing by and leave a comment.
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