Monthly Archives: September 2009
Tired of Competing
After being in the ministry for ten years I can honestly say that nothing bothers me like competing for the attention of people. In this world in which we live it seems there is always something more important than church. I was discussing this with a friend of mine yesterday. When we were growing up we went to so many church things that we couldn’t pay kids to come to now. Heck even parents are hard tog et to the church. It seems as if church has been relegated to a “if I have nothing better to do” role.
Whether it be a sports event, work, a social gathering , just time to “rest” or some other reason it seems that it is getting harder and harder to get people to be seriously committed to attending a worship service or serving in the church. Now don’t get me wrong I understand that church and God are not the same but it is my experience that those closest to God want to be in the church where there are multiple opportunities to serve the God that saved them from their sins and the ones that are apathetic or flippant about there faith are the ones that have a “take it or leave it” attitude towards the church.
I am tired of competing and I bet God is too
Speaking
I have been praying lately about other ways God can use me to further his word. After thinking and praying about it long and hard I have decided to test the waters of the speaking realm. So if you or your church, youth ministry collegiate ministry, BCM or FCA would like to have me in just drop me a line at RFBCNextGen@gmail.com . At this point I am not looking to charge anything although depending on the distance I may ask for a mileage allowance. If you are interested in hearing a sample message check out my church webpage under sermons.
Got you fooled
Psa 44:21 Will not God search this out? For he knoweth the secrets of the heart
I was in a facebook convo the other day with a lady that I knew when I was in High School. (btw it was very strange for me to call someone one my age “lady” and not “girl”). It derived from a tweet I had made concerning who I was and what I am now. More precisely I tweeted
Power of God = Loser kid from Edgemoor SC (me) being used to reach a community of young people with the love Christ (South Greenville)
I caught flack for calling my former self a “loser” but the reality of things are that I was. The argument was made that I was someone then that stood up for what I believed in. A point at which I can’t help but laugh. You see I had everyone fooled. I played a really good game and put on a really good show but the reality was I had a dark heart.
My teenage years were no worse than anyone else’s but of course I thought they were at the time. I lived for several years with three motivations: Money, Sex, and Power. These three things devoured my every thought. I was consumed with the idea of having whatever I wanted and to be successful and to be able to rub it in the face of many of my peers. That is where power came into play. I was an easy target (and still am) for many of the people that I spent time around becoming the odd man out at my job and within my circle of acquaintances. All of that brought about great anger and hate and fueled the motives for power. Power to stick it to people who I had perceived as wronging me. I was so arrogant that I couldn’t see the damage I was doing to myself. Then there were the hormones. I allowed lust to overcome me in every aspect of my thoughts. I became obsessed and I thank God for protecting me and shielding me from situations that would have led to much heartache at the time.
All the while I had people believing that I was “good little church boy”. It is amazing the con I pulled off when I think about it. But here is the great thing, even though I was this “loser” that was only one opportunity away from abadoning what I said that I believed God knew my heart and was orchestraing my redemption and eventual transformation. He brought me to a place where I looked at my faith differently and then gave me enough leash to hang myself and realize how desperately I really needed HIM.
Thank God we can’t fool HIM when every one else is blinded by what they see and hear God sees what really is.
What have we really figured out?
This video segues nicely into the post I have been wanting to write for some time
As a minister in a pretty traditional church it goes without saying that there are a lot of things that we do that have “always been done” that are not necessarily effective. When I look at the landscape and the history of what brought us to our present it is very obvious to me that we have done what almost every other long standing church has done at some point in time in their history. Somewhere, someone, or some group looked over what they were doing and said” Ok now we have got a good church” and were satisfied with that. And therein lies the problem.
In this journey of life the one thing we can figure out is that we don’t have it figured out. Just like in the video many churches “think ” they know how to reach people but there inclusive speech and condescending attitudes only turn people off . And yet those members of that church probably think they have it going on. They are setting themselves up for failure in the long term.
I was in a short facebook conversation about contentment and how sometimes we need to just be happy with the way things are going in our ministry and that change for the sake of change is not good. I agree with the last part but the first part I am adamant about. There is at no point a time where we can sit back and be satisfied. the call the cause the need is to great. We have to be about the Lord’s work and if we think we are running the perfect ministry I got news for ya…. there is gonna be some problems. God is perfect we are substandard and we need to be re-evaluating ourselves constantly.
I will say that it will hurt. Self critique is never easy but in that moment we give God the opportunity to have our focus long enough to actually speak to us and guide us and until that happens we are working in vain.
