Trev's Top Ten Tips

At our recent Ministry Leaders Meeting I shared with our leaders “Trev’s Top Ten Tips” for leadership.  Just various lessons I’ve picked up along the way, both from experience and from others.

Here’s a brief summary............

• Lead Yourself – no one can lead others who doesn’t know how to lead themselves in private disciplines, basic organisation and sense of order, mastering moods and emotions and a basic level of consistency.
• Integrity – saying what you mean, meaning what you say ; keeping promises; faithfulness
• Clarity – harder than it sounds. People can live without certainty, they cannot live without clarity. Work hard at being clear
• The Power of the Little – Jesus fed 500 plus people with a little boy’s little lunch. Little things mean a lot – small words, text messages, small acts of kindness, notes of encouragement etc
• It came to pass - don’t get too hung up with the problems of the moment. The things you worry about usually pass; the issues you grappled with this time last year are probably history now
• Don’t try to meet every need – in John 5 Jesus held the man at the pool of Bethesda. Only him. There were loads of others around the pool that day. Their needs went unmet – and he was the Son of God. Even he didn’t meet every need.
• Find out where God is at work and go there. It’s easier to minister where God is already preparing hearts and minds
• Celebrate successes and learn from failure – every small success is a cause for celebration. The Jews were always celebrating God – that’s why they have so many feast days! Don’t dwell on failures – just learn from them.
• Connect to succeed- leadership largely about connecting with people. You cannot lead if you are not a people person Find out how to make proper connections with the people around you, especially your co-leaders
• Influence comes from trust and trust comes from actions. What you do encourages others to trust you. Then you get their ear and their heart then you are really in a position to influence them for good.

Deep and Wide

During my holiday I really loved reading a book called “Deep and Wide”, written by Andy Stanley, the pastor of North Point Church in Atlanta, USA.  Firstly, I thought, that’s a great title.  How come nobody ever thought of writing a book with that title before? Immediately you think of the old chorus

Deep and wide,

Deep and wide

There’ s a fountain flowing deep and wide (altogether now)

But this isn't about the love of God depicted as a fountain – this is a book about church.  And I love books about church.  Because I love church.  It’s my life and I owe church an awful lot. Had I not found a good church after I became a follower of Jesus I don’t know where I would be today.  Had my children not been part of church life, they would be far, far worse off today.  Trust me, despite all the problems and all the bad church experiences, you are better off being with a good group of God’s people and enjoying the life of community together.  It’s what you were designed for.

But like churches themselves, not all books about churches are good.  In fact some books about church and some churches are just terrible.  But this is a good book about church – how can we become deep and wide at the same time.  That’s the theme, based on Stanley’s own experience of creating a group of churches like that.  The suspicion is that if a church takes people deep then it cant be wide and it will die; and if a church goes wide, to do everything possible to bring in unchurched and unsaved people, then nobody ever goes deep  and grows mature.  No, No, says Stanley, both are possible and he teaches ways of doing that in this book.

I was challenged to think of the changing culture where vast swathes of people have no or little contact with church.  The numbers are increasing.  The current generation has largely abandoned the faith of its grandparents and its parents.  Often the reason for that is because the church culture itself alienates people – the church gets in the way of the message.  The medium contradicts the very message it is supposed to articulate.  Church gets in the way of Christ.  The model hinders the mission.  Does that matter?  Of course it does.  I have seen people get passionate and steamed up about all sorts of trivial church things, yet care nothing for those on their way to a lost eternity.  And if that continues, then one day all the doors in every church will be closed permanently, the secularists will have won and the devil will laugh.

Argue it how you will, this cannot be a good thing.  A message which is for everybody should not exclude anybody.  But making that happen is not easy.  It takes courage and new thinking and an awareness by every member of every church that church is not primarily for them – its for the lost, the outsider, the stranger in our gates, the lonely and the hurting. Why?  Because there really is a ’fountain flowing deep and wide’ and the church should encourage all and deter none, “to plunge right in and lose their sin”.

2 Boys Destined for Kingship

With the birth of George Alexander Louis on Monday last, we now have 3 direct living heirs to the throne for the first time since the late 19th century.  George is destined for a different life from you and me.  I doubt if he will have to queue for diesel at Tesco or wait endlessly listening to dreary music while his service provider tells him “your call is important to us – please hold the line” No, if the monarchy remains, he will probably inherit the throne one day.

How different the early circumstances of another one destined for kingship - the great King David. He moved from Shepherd to Sovereign.  Having just started preaching on his life, I've been thinking about this other young man destined for greatness.  The youngest of 8 (how unusual, isn't it normally the firstborn who ascends to the throne?) he was deemed so insignificant by his father Jesse, that when the boys were made to pass in front of Samuel, the national prophet, for examination, he was left out.  Probably not even deemed worthy of being in the parade.  But here was the man after God’s own heart that was promised; for man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.

What was it that God saw in his early life that destined him for kingship?

• Spirituality – for to be after God’s own heart requires deep commitment to spiritual things. If you are after God’s own heart, you want what God wants, care for what God cares for, get grieved by what grieves him, long for the same things and desire the same things. 
• Integrity - Psalm 78 v21 says he was a shepherd of integrity. Thats a key quality God looks for. I love this quote………..

“A person with integrity is not divided (that’s duplicity) or pretending (that’s hypocrisy). He or she is “whole”; life is “put together and things are working harmoniously. People with integrity have NOTHING TO HIDE AND NOTHING TO FEAR. Their lives are OPEN BOOKS”

• Humility – he was tending the sheep and made no attempt to muscle in on the show before Samuel until he was summoned. 
• Obscurity – he was quite happy to see character formed in the fields away from the limelight. 
• Dependability - for when he stood before Saul and offered to take on Goliath, he admitted that he had fought lions and bears, who might want to steal his sheep. Having fought wild creatures in obscurity, the 9’6” tall Philistine was no problem. Imagine George having to prove himself by taking on the odd lion or two!!

Who knows what life will throw up at you in coming months.  Wouldn't it be good to face it as a person after God’s own heart?

The Importance of Church Membership

Is there a difference between ATTENDING a church regularly and JOINING a church?  I believe there is.  Absolutely. Is there a difference between going with someone and marrying them? Absolutely.  The difference is vast and vital and valuable.

Church is thoroughly biblical.  We live in a world of evangelicalism where church is downgraded, devalued and downplayed.  Shame on us.  Many modern Christians are spectators of Christianity rather than participants.

• They get their teaching from their favourite Christian celebrity through their iPad or from Christian events
• They find worship communicated to them through Christian media.
• They bounce from event to event, from website to website.
• They don’t want regular commitment or accountability.
• They ignore the ordinances of communion and baptism despite the clear command of God to do so.
• They do not want to be accountable or disciplined or challenged.
• They want the church to be there when they need it but they consider the latest Christian “big thing” as far more valuable than the faithful local church pastor who is trying to build the church in his locality

Many churches therefore have given up trying to enforce membership.  They no longer require it nor ask for it, they have given up on any biblical notion of challenging people to believe and belong;  to gather together as part of the local church.  We have often heard the phrase “a personal relationship” with Jesus Christ – far more biblical is the idea of 'a corporate relationship with Jesus Christ'.  He is the head of the church!  Paul wrote most of his letters to 'churches'.  They knew their members, they knew their names and their struggles.  In certain circumstances they were urged to put people out of the church.  How could they do that if they didn’t know who was in?  Membership is necessary.  The NT knows nothing of the idea of a Christina who has less than full commitment to the church.  Did Christ give less than full commitment to the church?  Are you threatened by the idea of church membership?  Why?  Because of hidden sin that might be exposed?  Because of how you might be challenged to serve or give?  Are these things really threats?  Should they not be joy?  Are you concerned that you might have to give up some independence?  That you might actually have to commit to turn up at 11 on a Sunday or to a prayer meeting when you would rather just 'make up your own mind' how to spend your time.  Isn't that just nonsense?

Here are a few (just a few) of the many, many benefits from church membership.  

You.....

• Learn to live with other believers in community
• Learn how to handle conflict in a biblical way
• Find opportunities to serve and exercise gifts
• Avail of the ordinances of baptism and membership
• Have people to hold you accountable
• Learn to be faithful, disciplined
• Be part of a spiritual family
• Receive spiritual benefit from others
• Have authority figures in your life
• Have spiritual caretakers
• Receive solid teaching in a crazy world

This is an obedience issue, a fellowship issue, an authority issue, an identity issue

Do you want to be known as a Christian?  A member of the body?  A fellow believer with others?

Get into membership – you cant just keep on “going out” for ever

Our Daily Bread

We all learnt the Lord’s Prayer as children and probably have fond (or otherwise) memories of school assemblies where we recited it ad nauseum.  For that reason some of its rich meaning has been lost in over-familiarity and sense of “well we know what it’s all about.”

But as we‘ve been unpacking it recently in our evening series, it has had renewed force in my life.  It starts with God. All our praying and all our lives should derive their main focus from Him - His glory, His name, His kingdom  - and yet how often are we all about the great god “Me” rather than the great God who is in heaven!

And it moves to us in our great moral needs of forgiveness, deliverance from temptation and evil. And in the middle?  The only statement in the whole prayer about material provision - “Give us this day our daily bread” – more of a recognition of the Giver than a request for something to be given.  It points us to the SOURCE of all things - God.  It reminds us of the SUBSTANCE we need – bread, not the luxuries but the basics.  It reminds us of the SEEKERS – us, for we are part of a community and it grounds us in the SCHEDULE God works to - ‘daily’.

But the word Jesus uses for “daily” is an interesting one.  It is “epiousious” and is only used here and in Luke 11 v3, which is Luke’s parallel record of the same model prayer.  It is difficult to pin down the exact meaning but it is wider than we might think.  The idea is that not only do we ask for bread for today but every day going forward.  This is a prayer for continual provision which frees us from greed, self-sufficiency, selfishness and ongoing worry and stress.

I’m constantly challenged about how to live a contented life in a mad, materialistic society. Surely one of the ways is to get a God-perspective on our lives, to have gratitude, which comes from contentment, which comes from peace, which comes from living each day close to the Father’s heart and recognising the one who is the Bread of Life.  It’s tough but well worth the daily battle to realise that it’s bread alone we need. Everything else is a big bonus!!

Crisis Management

Just been reading a cracking book “The Church in an age of Crisis “ by James Emery White, who is the pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in North Carolina. The sub title is “25 New Realities facing Christianity”

This is a well researched attempt to understand modern culture, the modern mind and lifestyle – a “whirlwind tour of our day” and the obvious challenges it presents for the Christian church, as we seek to communicate unchanging truth to a fast, changing world.

The 25 new realities are conveniently divided into 5 sections, namely Faith, Mindset, Marriage and Family, Media and Technology and Mission and each of those is subdivided into 5 e.g. the 5 realities of modern day marriage and family are “We’re just not into marriage”; pornification; modern family; regarding gender and the disappearance of childhood. 

I found myself saying yes, yes, yes, many times throughout this book. Using comprehensive research, Pastor White very helpfully pinpoints the key cultural markers of our day. The book doesn’t attempt to say what we should do about living in such a world and how we should work out our calling to be salt and light in our world – that is left to each reader and each church leader to think through for themselves. But at least he does paint a very helpful picture. Whilst much of it is specifically orientated to a north American mindset, none of us should be unaware of how relevant this is for our own culture too.
 
Here’s one example of many I could choose. In a chapter entitled, “Is Google God?” he shows how indeed for most people Google has become the fount of all knowledge and information, even though much of what you read is little more than “endless volleys of nonsense, folly and rumour masquerading as knowledge, wisdom and even truth”. A practical and relevant example – google “Easter - its meaning and its origins” and you will get millions of articles. The average, non –churched biblically illiterate person may read any one, believe it is definitive and be further misled away from truth. There is a disconnect in our world between information (much of it false) and knowledge and wisdom.

The implications and challenge for the modern church should be obvious. The men of Issachar understood the times” (1 Chron. 12 v 32) – and so should we, so that we are effective witnesses for the unchanging Christ and reveal eternal realities to a confused world.

Sinful Nature and the Flesh

I’ve been preaching on Romans recently. What a book! Last week we were in chapter 8. The key/hinge verse is v 5 which says, “Those who live according to SARX have their MINDS SET on what SARX desires but those who live according to the Spirit have their MINDS SET on what the Spirit desires”.

This word SARX literally means “flesh”. Translation is a notoriously complex task as it is very difficult to convey all the nuances of a word in one language into another equivalent one word translation (eg try translating Ulster ‘banter’ or ‘craic’ in one word to someone from another country). The NIV translators in the 1984 version translated ‘SARX’ as ‘sinful nature’. The newer 2011 translation has gone back to the translation ‘flesh’, originally favoured by the KJV.

The NT uses the Greek word effectively to mean “the meat on the bones”, literally “the flesh”. So for example in John1 v 14 “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” ie Jesus took on human skin.

But the NT also uses the expression to refer to the tendency to sin that is a part of fallen human experience. So faced with the challenge of translating ‘SARX’, the translators were a bit afraid of conveying the impression that ‘sarx’ referred only to the physical (as in our expression in English ‘the sins of the flesh’) so they went for ‘sinful nature’. But this could convey the impression that we have two natures when Paul clearly says that we have one – the new nature that comes from being in Christ. Hence “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8 v1) so in the 2011 version they have gone back to the translation ‘flesh.’

But Romans 8 v 5 is crucial in the sense that that it provides a very clear test as to whether or not you truly belong to Christ. Where is your “mind set”? What world/realm do you live in? What dominates you? What is your default mental position? What are the issues in life which really motivate you and mean most to you? What do you really live for? What controls you? What matters more than anything else? If you could only have one thing what would it be? If it is not Christ above all, then serious self examination is required.

We are all dominated by a certain “mindedness”. The only difference between an unsaved ‘moral’ person and the worst rogue you can think of is on the outside, not the inside. Counterfeit gods come in many shapes/sizes but unless our lives are dominated by the One true God, His cause and His glory, then according to Paul we haven’t really got it at all. Makes you think doesn’t it??