Jeff Hennigan

Five Fold Ministry Test

I love what Mike Breen and the folks over at www.weare3dm.com have put together...

 

You can take the test online (and it immediately tabulates your results and gives analysis) for free. As Ephesians 4:11 discusses it, are you a Pastor, Prophet, Evangelist, Apostle or Teacher?

 

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE FREE TEST

CHURCHES LOOKING FOR A SILVER BULLET IN A MICROWAVE CULTURE - Mike Breen

I saw this article over at www.weare3dm.com and had to share...

 

The past 6 weeks or so I’ve spent discussing the importance of creating extended families on mission (Missional Communities of 20-50 people) and in the midst of that time I’ve been doing workshops talking about similar things.

In these last few weeks, two things have stuck out to me in interacting with pastors about Missional Communities:

1. So many pastors are looking for the Silver Bullet. They are looking for the one thing that can save the day and keep their church (and the church in general) from the precipitous decline they are facing.

2. They are hoping to master whatever this Silver Bullet is, whatever it may be, and hoping they can do so almost overnight. As if you could stick their church in a microwave, and two minutes later…DING!…”it’s ready!”

 

First, I do believe there is a Silver Bullet for the church and it’s discipleship. However, the issue is that discipleship is something that is simple, but hard, not complex and easy. It takes a while. And because we’ve been about building churches first and foremost (hoping it would grow as quickly as possible) and rather whimsically hoping we get disciples out of it, we’re not accustomed to the amount of time and energy it takes to make even one disciple.

More and more I see this phenomenon happening with Missional Communities (MC’s) as well. I meet pastors who are looking for a quick fix to their seemingly unfixable problems. They assume that learning how to start, grow, disciple people and multiply MC’s is as simple as doing a 40 Days of Purpose sermon series. But it’s just not. It takes a long time to learn it.

Think of it this way.

Most pastors spend years and years becoming experts in running Sunday morning worship gatherings. They go to seminary for it. Spend 15-30 hours of sermon prep each week. Many grew up attending worship services and are thus pre-conditioned to have a certain level of expertise already (through the immersion process). If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it takes about 5 years of hard work before a pastor feels really competent in large gathering services. A lot of time and energy has gone into this.

Why do we assume that learning something like Missional Communities will be any easier or take less time? Why do we think we can learn to do MC’s faster than we can learn the worship service, something that most of us grew up with? MC’s are foreign to so many of us. It’s not like we can stick it in a microwave and pop it out.

I was talking with our Director of Content last week, Doug Paul, and he mentioned that he didn’t feel he was competent in launching, growing and multiplying Missional Communities for 18 months…and even then, he only felt he was “OK” at it and was still a ways off from “very good at it.”

I imagine people like Michael Stewart at VERGE/Austin Stone and Jeff Vanderstelt at SOMA would agree, as they’ve been doing great work with Missional Communities for several years now. It’s not easy, it’s not quick and it takes time to learn.

Now it’s completely worth it, but if we approach it like it’s a quick fix that will come easily, we’ve got a surprise coming our way.

I keep coming back to this quote from J.S. Bryan, but I think it’s so true:

Many men can build a fortune, but few men can build a family.

Similarly, I would say that many pastors can lead a worship service, but few pastors have the patience to learn the art of Missional Communities. It’s going to take longer than a week, a month or a year!

 

Why Christ's Resurrection Is More Than Just A Story - Tim Keller

In the decades before and after Jesus’ life and death, there were dozens of messianic movements in Israel. In almost every case the messianic leader was killed, in many cases by execution, and after the leader’s death each of these movements invariably collapsed. Everybody went home, and that was it. Of all those dozens of movements, only one did not collapse after the death of the leader. Not only did it not collapse, it exploded: In the course of about 300 years it had spread through the entire Roman empire.

Out of all those messianic movements, what made the Christian faith different? Christians would say it is because of what happened after the leader of this movement was killed. So what did happen to cause explosive growth in Christianity after its founder’s death?

Jesus died in mid-afternoon and the Sabbath began at sunset. The Jewish law permitted no work on the Sabbath, which meant they could not bury the body of Jesus that night or the next day. So Joseph goes to Pilate, hoping to be able to bury the body in time. Joseph, though a Pharisee, shows enormous courage and independence of thought by asking for Jesus’ body. Mark reports:

Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid. (Mark 15:44–47)

The way Mark reports the burial is significant: He is “certifying” that Jesus was really dead. Joseph of Arimathea is named here as an identified witness who actually had Jesus’ body wrapped up and sealed it in a tomb. A Roman centurion (who would be an expert) bore witness of Jesus’ death to Pilate (who would be the legal authority on the matter). Finally, two women are cited as eyewitnesses to the burial. So multiple experts and witnesses prove He was really dead.

The resurrection was as inconceivable for the first disciples, as impossible for them to believe, as it is for many of us today. Granted, their reasons would have been different from ours. The Greeks did not believe in resurrection; in the Greek worldview, the afterlife was liberation of the soul from the body. For them, resurrection would never be part of life after death. As for the Jews, some of them believed in a future general resurrection when the entire world would be renewed, but they had no concept of an individual rising from the dead. The people of Jesus’ day were not predisposed to believe in resurrection any more than we are.

Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century A.D., was highly antagonistic to Christianity and wrote a number of works listing arguments against it. One of the arguments he believed most telling went like this: Christianity can’t be true, because the written accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women—and we all know women are hysterical. And many of Celsus’ readers agreed: For them, that was a major problem. In ancient societies, as you know, women were marginalized, and the testimony of women was never given much credence.

Do you see what that means? If Mark and the Christians were making up these stories to get their movement off the ground, they would never have written women into the story as the first eyewitnesses to Jesus’ empty tomb. The only possible reason for the presence of women in these accounts is that they really were present and reported what they saw. The stone has been rolled away, the tomb is empty and an angel declares that Jesus is risen.

What was the resurrected Jesus like? Well, Jesus’ resurrection body had “flesh and bones.” He was not a ghost. The disciples were able to recognize Him and to touch Him. He spoke with them. But could they all have been having a group hallucination?

No, because the disciples were not the only ones who saw and touched Jesus. Paul makes a long list of people who claimed to have seen the risen Christ personally, and notes that “most of them are still living” (1 Corinthians 15:6).

Moreover, there has to be some explanation for how the cowardly group of disciples was transformed into a group of leaders. Many of them went on to live sacrificial lives, and many of them were killed for teaching that Jesus had been resurrected.

Jesus had risen, just as He told them He would. After a criminal does his time in jail and fully satisfies the sentence, the law has no more claim on him and he walks out free. Jesus Christ came to pay the penalty for our sins. That was an infinite sentence, but He must have satisfied it fully, because on Easter Sunday He walked out free. The resurrection was God’s way of stamping PAID IN FULL right across history so that nobody could miss it.

On the Day of the Lord—the day that God makes everything right, the day that everything sad comes untrue—on that day the same thing will happen to your own hurts and sadness. You will find that the worst things that have ever happened to you will in the end only enhance your eternal delight. On that day, all of it will be turned inside out and you will know joy beyond the walls of the world. The joy of your glory will be that much greater for every scar you bear. So live in the light of the resurrection and renewal of this world, and of yourself, in a glorious, never-ending, joyful dance of grace.

 

I found this article over at Relevant Magazine.  Check them out when you have time.

 

Five Questions For Leaders - Perry Noble

Check out my friend Perry Noble's blog on leadership. I attended this coaching network a few years ago and highly recommend it.  

www.perrynoble.com

Five Questions For Leaders

#1 - Are you healthy? (If you haven't check out this article about how to see whether or not you are near or at burnout.) If a church is going to continue to grow, the leader (leaders) MUST be healthy--period.

#2 - Are you having a hard time trying to figure out how to lead the people above you? (This is considered to be one of the toughest things about leadership--when, in actuality, it's not that difficult at all!)

#3 - Is there anything in your church/organization that you are doing that is draining energy and resources that simply needs to stop?

#4 - What do you do when your vision seems to be bigger than your resources?

#5 - How in the world do you hire and keep great staff members?

If you want to REALLY dive into these questions--plus a whole lot more--then join me on February 18-20 for "Unleash Your Leadership," a two day INTENSE time of leadership development complete with numerous Q & A sessions.

Seats are going FAST (less than 10 left) so if you want to sign up then do so ASAP!!! (Here is the link with more info!)

 

Why Cities Matter - by Tim Keller. This is one of the reasons I feel compelled to be involved with gospel work in the cities of the world.