Joy filler or killer, which are you?

Hebrews 13:17 is a fascinating verse.  "Obey your leader and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your soul, as those who will have to give an account.  Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you."

We have two choices when it comes to what sort of people we are in church, we are either burdensome making leadership hard and groan filled or we are a joy to lead.  But what does that look like?  How do I make leadership a joy for those in leadership in my church?  Let me make some suggestions:

1. Be there.  Your presence is a blessing and an encouragement.  It conveys commitment and that you appreciate all that they do and take your spiritual wellbeing as seriously as they do.  And that applies not just on Sunday's, endeavour to be part of a gospel or home group, be at prayer meetings.  As you do so you are inviting and enabling the leadership, and other people, to know you and care for you well.
2. Be engaged.  Engage with what the leaders are teaching from the Bible, ask them questions about it (leaders aren't afraid of this, they love it when people want to explore God's word, or even be clear in their minds on something that is just a bit vague after the sermon or bible study).  Engage with the direction the leadership are taking the church, question them about why they are making the decisions they are making and what they hope the outcome will be - convey that you have confidence in them but want to understand and support and get onboard.
3. Be Growing.  If you asked what leaders of churches want it is for people to be progressing in their faith, to be growing and changing as they wrestle to apply the gospel to every area of their lives.  If you want to make your leaders leadership a joy, to encourage them to keep going let them know where and when you are wrestling to apply God's word, or when it has encouraged you or challenged you and what you are praying the outcome would be.
4. Be giving.  Be giving financially to support the work of the church, the Bible calls us to do just that as an act of love in reasons to the gospel.  And not tight-fistedly but as generously as Christ has given to us.  Why not start with the tithe as a bare minimum and then challenges yourself to give more when you review it after 3 months?  Give of your time and gifts too, this shouldn't be done in lieu of financial support but alongside it.  Where can you serve, how can you be involved, how can you support, who can you encourage?  
5. Be fishing.  Be engaged with taking the gospel to your work colleagues, friends, family and neighbourhood.  Be that by starting an Uncover Bible study, bringing friends to services, serving the community in act of practical love or in any number of other ways.  But make Jesus mission your mission, not just the leaders.

Perhaps the negative is helpful.  How could I fill a leaders life with groaning?  Let me again make some suggestions:

1. Be sporadic.  Be infrequent never really committing so that no-one every really knows whether you are committed or not.  Be busy so that you dash in late and have to hurry away afterwards.  Be too busy to attend a home group and ensure that your children are so busy they can't really be involved or build good relationships.  That's bound to make your leaders nervous and concerned.
2. Be disinterested.  In part this will show in number 1.  But you can also be present but disinterested.  Approaching the pastor straight after the sermon finishes to ask him about his Fantasy football team, or to tell him of the interesting anecdote his first illustration made you think of is not encouraging.  Neither is texting, updating your status on Facebook, or playing clash of clans during his sermon.  Disinterest can also take the form of criticism or cynicism, that says no matter what you do I'm not inserted in following.
3. Be static.  Be totally uninterested in changing.  Show no interest in applying what you hear to life.  Or alternately if you are changing don't tell anyone or share what God is doing.
4. Be a consumer.  Don't support the church financial, or if you do make sure it's just a token offering.  Don't give anything whilst making the most of every opportunity you can to leech as much as you can from the church.  Give nothing by way of time and support.  Consume the teaching, send as many kids as you can to the youth work.  Criticise and tell the leaders of programmes other churches are running that fit just what you need and pressure them to start one just like that - though of course you're too busy to help with it.
5. Be insular.  Don't engage with the outside world.  Don't bring anyone to church ever.  Don't go along to support guest events let alone take anyone.  Don't be welcoming to visitors.  And if every you're asked let your leaders know evangelism is their job after all it's their church.

They are just a few ways we could encourage or discourage our leaders, I'd love to hear others if you have them.

Is Church planting always the answer?

Those of you who read regularly know I love planting churches, after all it's what I did and I'm loving pastoring Grace Church.  I'd love to be part of planting something again in the future.  But just recently I've been wondering whether in some cases we would be better church seeding rather than church planting.

Seeding is where a small group of people join an existing church specifically to grow and engage with that church and its community.  Instead of planting from scratch they look to join a church in the area/town/city they have a passion for and make it their church family.  They intentionally go with the aim of encouraging the faithful preaching of God's word, supporting the churches mission and fully engaging in the community.

Why church seeding?  Throughout the north of England there are countless small, faithful, struggling churches, led by faithful, God loving, Jesus following, Bible teaching elders and pastors.  These men and their families don't need the discouragement of another church opening next to them what they need is more workers partnering with and encouraging them.

I remember the great encouragement it was for us when over a summer two young couples joined us as a small church.  The impact of those two young couples was greater with us than it would have been in a large church because of the greater proportional impact they had in growing the church, encouraged the believers, and having an appetite for Christ centred bible teaching.

I can't help wondering at the impact such a seeding of churches would have on the gospel in the North of England.  Small groups of people joining small faithful churches, committing to them, serving in them and encouraging good Bible teaching there.  I think in a relatively small period of time churches would be turned round, leaders would be raised us and good Bible teaching would be multiplied and God's faithful servants in hard places encouraged.

So before we think of planting maybe we should have discussions about seeding?

How to care for your Pastor

I was re-reading a book recently which contained this statistic: 44%of those in pastoral ministry for more than 15 years suffer from burn-out, mental breakdown or serious illness (and that doesn't include immorality or loss of faith). Whilst that alarming statistic is from Australia I don't imagine the UK is much different. I think in view of that we need to think about how we as churches and church leaders care for our pastors, how we facilitate their being in ministry long term. I’m going to suggest a number of things that I think are helpful:

1. Set Clear Expectations

• How many hours is he expected to work?
• How many hours he is actually working?
• How can we maintain a healthy balance here?

2. Help him avoid distraction from gospel work

• What are our expectations of him in his duties?
• What priorities do we want him to have?
• What other things might occupy his time?
• What distracts him from his primary tasks?
• How can we help him enjoy his work?

3. Help him keep on growing in his faith

• Is he reading and praying for himself?
• How can we encourage this even more if it is the case?
• Or facilitate it if it isn’t?
• Should we put in place a mentor system to ensure this is happening?
• If not how else do we pastor the pastor?

4. Resource him

• Are we encouraging him to continue being trained?
• Are we resourcing this with time and money and necessary changes to expectations?
• Is there a budget for conferences, books, etc... and if so is it sufficient?

5. Friendship

• Who is he spending time with outside of ministry?
• How will we encourage close friendships with those in the church?
• How will we facilitate time spent with other ministers?

6. Encourage him
It strikes me that we Brits never like to encourage someone in case it goes to his head and yet we are quick to challenge and even criticise, this can be incredibly damaging.  It is not that we must never criticise or question that would be equally wrong, but we also need to see the value of encouraging.

• How can we share with him what has helped or challenged us?
• How can we help him labour for the long term and not become disheartened by the often slow pace of change?

7. Provide for his family

• How generous can we be in providing financially?
• What will we provide by way of holiday/days-off?
• Will we check he takes it?
• How can we protect his day off with his family?
• How do we convey this to the church family?

8. Partner with him
Loneliness is one of the prime defeaters of ministry, it saps and sucks passion and energy.

• How can we share in vision setting and reaching that goal?
• How do we convey that an eldership is a team and we are partners together in this ministry?
• How do we build that team?

A fantastic Easter Sunday

How exciting was your Easter Sunday, we had a great day. In the morning we had our hearts set on fire again as we looked at Luke 24 you can listen to the MP3 here www.graceinthecommunity.org by clicking on the What's new link. It was great to see again how Jesus teaches scripture to reignite the embers of the disciples dying hopes and how we are to apply that in encouraging each other and witnessing to others that Jesus is the Christ and he is risen.

Then in the afternoon we had the joy as a church of baptising 3 ladies all from different backgrounds but with Christ as their Saviour and Lord. It was a first for us as we did the baptism outdoors in someones back garden using a fantastic portable baptismal tank - it was a great evangelistic opportunity. Praise God for his grace and mercy to us in Jesus.

They think its all over

How do you deal with the post stress let down? When the adrenaline rush subsides because everything is done. Do you collapse in a heap or carry on encouraged? Last weeks mission is finished and Easter is over for another year.

The danger is to just go back to default mode. Having put all that effort into inviting people to things for the week just to let it drift. But what a great catalyst it should be. It was such an encouragement to see the church full of ladies flower arranging and listening to the gospel, to see men playing golf, playing football or eating curry and listening to the gospel. To see families engaging with one another enjoying themselves and hearing the gospel. To see the church full of people listening to Jazz building relationships and engaging with issues such as suffering, truth, and life before death. And then to see friends with us on Sunday to hear God's word taught and the resurrection proclaimed.

The encouragement is that the gospel is relevant, that our friends and neighbours do have those questions and are willing to come and hear the Bibles answers. God is great and he works as we pray and then take the risk of inviting those we want to hear the great news.