Category — Coaching

What can you bring change to a church that didn’t begin in an outward direction? Here are a couple of practical first steps to take.

…senior leadership (esp the senior leader) can begin to regularly participate in outreach – IE once a week. This one step will transform a congregation more powerfully than any other. As this person (people) go, so goes the church. Sure they are busy, but who isn’t! Pastor Timothy was plenty busy when Paul exhorted him to “do the work of an evangelist.” Most pastors are naturally inclined to do the work of a teacher rather than outreach. That’s okay. You can determine to do outreach and God will grant you favor and fruit. I am a living testimony of that. Of course these leaders need to be persuaded to do this. For most pastors it takes no significant empowering to stand up and teach each week – that comes naturally to them. Outreach is another story. Lean into the empowering of the Holy Spirit and stand back to see what God does as he shows up in surprising ways. He will change your life and change your church.

…begin to reach out regularly – on a weekly basis. Begin to show others that this is fun and doable. Bring back encouraging stories. Take pictures and videos with your phone to show others the power of simple but profound acts of God’s generosity. It will take about six months of weekly outreach to properly launch a momentous outward ministry at your church. Don’t give up before you are off the ground!

…set aside a percentage of the local church’s budget to local ministry to the Poor that will be distributed by local church people. There is nothing more transformational to a church than engaging in care for the needy.

…practice one-on-one prayers with outsiders. Begin with ten second prayers for those you reach out to. As you pray you will find open doors to bring the Gospel to hearts that are wide open and hungry for God.

Seth Godin is a thinker I look up to. He says, “Plans are good but missions are better.”

Plans will let you down but missions endure for the long haul.

Plans have a limited shelf life. They come and go. They are packaged and eventually they wear out. Missions cause us to move forward for the rest of our lives.

A mission is something God himself touches the deepest part of our lives with – and in turn changes the world through us.

Phony leaders speculate from the sidelines but real leaders have a penchant for action. A pastor friend of mine understands this well. His phone message is,

“I’m not here right now because I’m out doing good to all kinds of people and casting out demons (Acts 10:38). Please leave a message.” That would be funny if it were mere words, but that is exactly what he does for a good part of each week.

Leaders own the task at hand by being personally involved. They distain too much talk that is sometimes mistaken as “planning.” Phony leaders sometimes coach, they even write books. Real leaders roll up their sleeves and lead from the front of the pack as they do what they preach. Real leaders have a prejudice for action. Yes they coach – they give advice, but they do it out of their commitment to activism – from the front. That’s why it’s called the “leading edge.”

As you reach out to bring others to Christ, how much of what you do is happening by the power of the Holy Spirit…and how much is happening in mere human strength? For the most part we tend to be mixed people. At times we know his empowering, then we slip back and walk in our own strength.

It’s possible to live a version of the Christian life in self-empowering for an extended time when we aren’t giving the Kingdom away, but when we begin to do outreach we quickly come to the end of our own abilities. It is the will of God that we walk fluently in his presence. Success is giving away the Kingdom in the power of the Spirit. This is the normal Christian life.

Evangelist Dwight Moody operated consistently in the power of the Spirit. That was the key to his amazing evangelistic ministry, but it wasn’t always that way. Early in his outreaches he went through an extended time of not knowing the presence of the Spirit so he began to pursue the Lord – that he would be empowered. One day while walking the streets New York, out of the blue, God’s Spirit came upon him. He describes this in his journal:
“Ah, what a day! – I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it, it is almost too sacred an experience to name…I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay his hand.”

Our sense of God’s nearness will come and go. At times we will feel him – at other times we proceed by sheer faith. But as we walk in his empowering for ministry we will consistently know fruitfulness. Let’s ask him for more.

The world is in constant motion. It seems the Church isn’t always aware of this basic fact. If we aren’t careful we can flog a dead horse, so to speak, that isn’t going to get us where we hope to arrive. This truth is especially accurate today with the ubiquitous presence of technology. Things change at an amazing speed all over the globe. The contrary point is also true. What worked long ago, then didn’t work for a time, now works once again. Outreach is like that. Things run their course, they pass away, then are resurrected at a later time. Sometimes God reinvigorates approaches to ministry. If we are wise we will pay attention to what he is doing instead of criticizing things out of hand simply because they once were ineffective.