Acts 29: 2011

The dirty Manger

"And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger." (Luke 2:7).

This is without a doubt my favorite time of year. I love everything about it: glowing lights, fragrant trees, cheerful carols, and cherished memories. One special Christmas memory and a song lyric add a depth of worship and gratitude that I will treasure in my heart forever.

Three ways to share the Gospel

People Are More Than Projects

The reason why we sometimes fail in evangelism is because people can detect that we see them more as a project than a person. This is true in the context of preaching and one-on-one. People perceive we have an agenda that doesn't have anything to do with them; it's just something to get out of them or something to get them to do. Our job is to communicate the gospel, the good news of a perfect Savior who died in the place of sinners, resurrected from the dead, and will one day return. We get to tell people this glorious news, and as we do it, the Apostle Paul gives us insight as to how this is to be communicated.

Jesus was the greatest leader who has ever lived.

Think about what he accomplished with just three years of a public ministry. It’s still impacting multitudes of people all over the world.

Here are the four things Jesus did that made him an effective leader:

Jesus’ secret to joy and life was simple: Die.

“If anyone would come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).

For disciples of Jesus, the gospel of grace not only plucks them from the easy path to hell but also places them on the hard path to heaven.

There is a church planting movement happening right now in the United States and around the world. It is causing a rapid multiplication of new disciples of Christ across denominational lines and cultural divides. Experts say that church planting is the number one way to reach unchurched people and make new disciples for Jesus Christ.

C. Peter Wagner says ...

1. If you want to see Jesus do something new and are sick of the status quo.

2. If you dream of being part of something bigger than yourself.

3. If you want to get into a fight/enter a battle for the kingdom of Christ.

4. If you feel a constant itch to see people who don’t know Jesus come to know Jesus and you believe church planting is the best way for the gospel to advance.

1. If you’re looking for the next cool thing in town (We want to grow by conversion growth, not church-goer transfer growth).

2. If you’re a Christian and you don’t like your current church (You will find reasons to not like this church).

3. If you have a bad track record at churches of being unteachable and causing problems (You won’t change here, you’ll repeat the pattern).

4. If you’re a consumer wanting to “go to church” 1x a week for a nice show (We are not a Sunday show, we are a community of disciples on a mission).

"The Church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning." - Emil Brunner

From time to time, I talk to pastors and church leaders, especially those in the camp of reformed theology, that say things like, “We're a church that's all about discipleship,” or “We're just a church that's trying to go deep.” What I have found over the years is that, much of the time, this is an excuse for them not doing any type of evangelism. I have also found it misleading. I would contend you are not deep as a church or good at discipleship as a church, unless people are getting saved and baptized as a church.

In my book, Leaders Who Last, I propose a definition of leadership. In that definition I state that four responsibilities of a leader are to shepherd, develop, equip, and empower those being led.

It is my conviction that a good leader is more an equipper than a doer. He/she gets more satisfaction out of equipping 10 people for ministry than trying to do the ministry of 10 people. Many times the reason leaders are overwhelmed and over-committed is that they are not equipping others but doing it all themselves.

If Moses' father-in-law were around, he would have the same advice for you and me that he had for Moses (Exodus 18). One of the main responsibilities of a leader is to develop and equip others to make their unique contribution. So, what is involved in doing that? Here are three precious gifts you can give the people around you!

I love being able to chat and dream with church planters, and one of the questions often asked by them is, "What's the one thing you would have wished you'd known before you started?"

My answer is simple: I wish that someone had told me the decision to launch the church was actually going to be one of the easier ones and during the next year or so I would face five critical tests that I believe every church planter goes through.

In my early Christian discipleship I was steeped in a system that encouraged us to share our faith. This was a good thing. We were often encouraged by some sort of simple diagram which showed us the power of exponential growth. If we just shared our faith with two people a year, and they shared their faith with two people a year in a very short time the entire human race would be won to Jesus. It never happened, at least not yet. Why?

I want you to notice this, that they were breaking bread from house to house, and ate their food with gladness and singleness of heart. They did not think that religion was meant only for Sundays, and for what men now-a-days call the House of God. Their own houses were houses of God, and their own meals were so mixed and mingled with the Lord’s Supper that to this day the most cautious student of the Bible cannot tell when they stopped eating their common meals, and when they began eating the Supper of the Lord. They elevated their meals into diets for worship: they so consecrated everything with prayer and praise that all around them was holiness to the Lord. I wish our houses were, in this way, dedicated to the Lord, so that we worshiped God all day long, and made our homes temples for the living God…

Recently I was asked to describe what I would do differently if I were to start church planting again. Here was my response.

1. We spend so much time with other believers we don't have time to invest in the lives of those who do not know Jesus.

2. We are afraid of being contaminated by having too much contact with the world.

Church Planting Movements are acts of God, but it’s amazing how much mankind is capable of interfering with them. As with most of God's works among us, He allows us to actively cooperate with Him or become obstacles - consciously or unconsciously - to His desired purposes. Missionaries involved in Church Planting Movements have identified several very human courses of action that tend to obstruct, slow or otherwise hinder CPMs.

Even though we cannot create a Church Planting Movement, we can certainly work to avoid blocking their emergence. Here [is one] of the most prominent obstacles to Church Planting Movements facing missionaries today: Planting “frog” rather than “lizard” churches.

1. From Biblical Priorities to Non-Biblical Priorities: Valuing methods and traditions sacred as scripture

2. From Leadership to Management: The people expect to be managed and those that led now simply manage the people they have.

3. From Volunteers to Employees: Increased staff creates pressure to maintain levels of income

The Book of Acts in 3 Minutes

A humorous look at the Book of Acts in 3 minutes.

Church Multiplication Associates Resources
www.CMAresources.org

Leadership 101: The Styles of a Leader

Leadership style refers to the blend of a leader’s personality, temperament and shaping. Style reflects the preferences and roles leaders are most equipped to fulfill. By identifying leadership style, leaders can better understand their unique fit, and they can learn to value others’ roles and contributions.

Conflicts often occur because leaders do not understand or value other styles of leadership.

Leadership functions describe what all leaders must do or be responsible for as they influence their followers toward God’s purposes.

Leadership functions help you recognize and identify the essentials of a leader.

God intervenes throughout a leader’s life in crucial ways in order to shape that leader toward his purposes. Viewed from a life perspective, God’s intervention is intentional and purposeful.

Ephesians 2:10 reveals that each of us is God’s craftsmanship. He has made us and is shaping us for ministry that he prepared for us. When Christ calls leaders into ministry, He intends to develop them fully. Each of us is responsible to God for our own development and response to God’s initiatives in our lives.

Dr. J. Robert Clinton developed this definition for a leader: A leader is a person with:
God-given capacity, and a God-given responsibility, who is influencing a specific group of God’s people, toward God’s purposes for that group.

At the heart of biblical leadership is the capacity to influence God’s people toward God’s purposes.

Warren Bennis is one of the most respected authors on the subject of leadership and is the founder of The Leadership Institute at USC. Bennis has said that “the crisis of leadership in our institutions and government is in many ways the most urgent and dangerous threat facing the world today because it is insufficiently recognized and little understood.”

Lists abound in regards to what are the essential skills that leaders need today to provide the type of leadership that Bennis talks about as missing today. His list looks at the balance of the “doing” of ministry, with the softer “people”, or “being” skills.

INSTRUCTIONS: As you read each statement check the number on the continuum that most accurately describes you. Check "0" if the statement on the left represents you exactly; check "5" if you feel you are perfectly described by the statement on the right. Numbers "1" through "4" reflect the various positions between the two extremes.

What does the end look like for Christian leaders, marketplace or vocational leaders? For old Pastors or Church planters? For Christian businessmen? For faithful, older lay leaders? What will be their final good bye?

Dr. J. Robert Clinton identified several categories of finishes:
1. Cut off early,
2. Finished poorly,
3. Finished "so so" (limited somehow),
4. Finished well,
5. Can't be sure.

The most important thing to do to reach the world’s unevangelized and neglected peoples is to plant small, simple, easily reproducible churches. It is estimated that over ninety percent of the churches being planted in the world today are small, house-type churches that are led by non-professional leaders. They are easily reproducible because they are not dependent on buildings or programs to spread the gospel. Seminary trained leaders are not required to proclaim the gospel in the villages and slums of the world. In fact, Western models of church do not work in most of Africa, India, China, and the Muslim worlds.

Disciple making is the heart of planting church planting churches and preaching the kingdom of God. Making disciples gets at the heart of being and doing church. There is no short cut and no substitute. There is no program or school that can disciple people. People make disciples, one person at a time.

There is a kingdom that is above all other kingdoms, a government that rules all other governments, and that is the Kingdom of God. God is the king over all kings. It says in Daniel 2, “God changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings.” (Daniel 2:21)

The apostolic foundation in the church is the ambition God places in the hearts of His people to make disciples and plant churches where Christ has not been proclaimed. When this ambition spreads in a community of believers, a culture takes hold that empowers a church community to have radical faith for the impossible. Apostolic passion enables a church to live boldly for the purposes of God. This is important because apostolic ambition originates in the heart of God: He longs for His Son to be worshiped by the nations and peoples who have never heard about Jesus.

Every church planting movement should be focused on encouraging people to express their love for God in their heart language and culture style. Churches that are racially or linguistically mixed are important for demonstrating reconciliation, but may make it impossible for most people to feel at home in the church.

Babies do not grow just by being babies. They have to be fed, to be loved, to obey their parents as they grow older. Simply being church does not mean we grow spiritually. A baby is fully human when it is born, but it needs to be fed, loved, guided in life by caring parents, and taught important truths. The same is true for a community of Jesus followers. When two or three people gather in His name, they are church. To grow up spiritually they need to express commitment to one another, to study and apply God’s word in an accountable fashion to their lives, to reach out to others, to worship together, to give of their resources, to pray, and to commit themselves to obey the great commission and submit to their spiritual leaders. Acts 2:42-47 shows this happening in the church. You can break the growth essentials they practiced into four elements of healthy church life:

The key to how we do church is discovered in how we define church. We can define church many ways. We can define it by what we want to get by going to church. We can define it by how we have always done church. And we can define it by how it is done in our culture. But there is one a problem with defining church in any or all of these ways: it may not be how God wants us to be and do church.

Keys unlock what is hidden from plain sight. Keys also open up treasures that are stored for safe-keeping. Jesus said to His disciples that He would give them the keys to the kingdom of God. The seven keys to building church planting movements are not secrets for the elite or for those who have special knowledge, but they do unlock principles that seem to be hidden to most people.

What do we learn from Paul about what missionaries do? Above all things we learn that Paul was a strategic thinker, with well defined results in mind for his missionary work. Paul assumed that wherever he went he would preach the gospel and the result would be that people would be saved and churches established. To achieve these results he had the following strategies in mind:

When a nation is in crisis we can either see what God sees for the nation, and align our hearts and thoughts with Him, or we can be overwhelmed by circumstances and allow offense and cynicism to take control of our heart. We can see how God sees and have faith, or we can see evil and tragedy without discernment - and lose faith. There is no in-between place for the heart of a Christian.

How do we respond to such a crisis? Does the word of God have anything relevant to say about such a crisis?

Who do we disciple?

"Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop . . . a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." (Matt. 13:8)

1. Jesus told us to look for the good soil (parable of the soil, sower and seed) - He didn't say not to love hard, rocky or thorny ground, but He did put an emphasis on attending to those who are responsive to the good news as a priority over those who are not ready to obey Him. We shouldn't choose between the "good soil" folks and others, but give the greatest attention to those who obey Jesus in contrast to those who don't. Keep loving the others, but invest most of our time in those who are prepared to obey.

The "MAWL" Process

"Discovery Groups" exist to lead a group of people to Christ and form a new church. During the limited lifespan of the group, the role of the church planter changes. His goal is to remove himself from the group so that leadership will emerge from within the group. The MAWL process describes this:

Discovery Groups ("D-Groups") are discipleship groups that can grow into little churches or remain small groups in a local church. The key element of D-Groups is multiplication – that is what gets people active in being a disciple and making disciples.

Here is a quick guideline on running a D-Group by using the ABC process. Use this as a "how to" guide and keep in mind as a church planter you will be training trainers to start more D-Groups that can grow into new churches. You do this not so much by doing it yourself but by coaching others.

Below are a few foundational discipleship practices that when followed will produce a simple five-step process for making disciples (and stating simple churches). Each step in the process has a priority that overflows into practical application, which together serves as a discipleship track for bringing new disciples to faith and helping them make more disciples. We call this process of training people to be disciple makers, "T4T", or Training for Trainers.

If Christian leaders were to ask themselves the question, "What is the ultimate end toward which God is working in history?" or "What does God want for the people in the place where I serve Him?"… how would it affect the way they minister there? The answers to these questions should describe the vision and define the tasks of their ministries.

True leadership and influence flows out of spiritual authority.

Spiritual Authority is the influence God grants to a leader. In a classic Kingdom paradox it is also something in which every leader must participate.

In many ways it is part of the “inside-out” nature of the Kingdom leadership. Spiritual authority is the by-product of a life of intimacy and dependency on Christ.

God grants to a leader spiritual authority, it is not something that is produced or gained through self promotion. Intentional character processing of a leader helps contribute to spiritual authority.

In Acts 1:1-8, we find Jesus’ disciples thinking in terms of what is best for their country; they totally misunderstand the nature of the Kingdom of God and what Jesus is about to do through them to advance His kingdom. They asked Jesus, “When will you restore the kingdom to Israel”? They are in a defensive mindset, thinking about how to protect Israel from Roman rule. Jesus wanted them to be in a offensive mindset, not to fight political battles but to battle for the broken hearted and bring the good news to the poor. To stir their hearts with faith and inspire them for with a bigger dream for their lives, Jesus paints a compelling vision of the future. The vision Jesus casts to them is an obedience based vision – what God will do if they as men and women obey Him.

Seven reasons to go

That part of the world we call the 10/40 Window is covered in spiritual darkness. Hundreds of millions of people are lost without Christ, separated from Him by spiritual darkness and deception. There are reasons, biblical reasons, why it is the will of God for every Christian to be part of lighting the window for the Lord Jesus. I have listed seven of those reasons below.

Making disciples like Jesus did

"And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach." (Mark 3:13)

Setting an example

Jesus showed His disciples how to live. Jesus invited them to participate in His doctrine, not to study it in theoretical isolation. He proved the relevance of what He taught by doing truth. Class was always in session. Discipleship was a way of life. Jewish disciples were expected to observe their teachers/rabbis and to learn by asking questions and then applying to their own lives what they observed. People do what they see and hear. First came heart connection then ministry responsibility.

The true fruit of an apple is ...

What’s the true fruit of an apple? Another apple . . . an apple tree?
No, the true fruit of an apple is an apple orchard!

This simple picture shows the potential God has placed in one single apple: it can bear fruit that continues to multiply itself until an entire apple orchard is thriving where in the beginning one single apple fell into the ground.

If this is true in the physical world, then how much more potential has God placed in His children and in His church! The challenge for us is to release that potential so we can multiply ourselves and become that thriving orchard.

It spreads the worship of Jesus: it is God’s mission on earth to exalt the supremacy of His glory and grace by having a people for himself.

It is God’s way of announcing the arrival of his kingdom on earth.

It reveals the incarnational mercy of God: He has come to dwell with and in fallen human hearts.

The traditional approach of training our future leaders in Bible College or seminary is counter-productive to raising up leaders within the local church. Exporting young leaders out of the local church to learn about leadership in a formal educational environment by-passes the most qualified people to train future pastors and elders, and that is pastors and elders themselves.

Emerging leaders will reproduce what they see, not what they are taught. If they are sent to seminary to learn about church life, they will emulate their professors, not their pastors and elders back home. They will want to teach in classrooms, not plant or pastor local churches. Is it not ironical that we teach courses on pastoring? Should not shepherding God’s people be learned through on the job training rather than reading about it in a textbook? By being mentored by a pastor rather than a professor?

Are you prepared to lead your followers on a journey of pioneering passion? If so, then this issue has to be settled: are you certain that you want your followers to be apostolic people? Here are some of the apostolic passions and practices of the church in Antioch and in the lives of Paul and Barnabas:

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