Category — Servant Evangelism

Janie and I have taken on a new adventure in ministry—we have begun to lead a Methodist church in the Greater Portland area. This is an established church that has been around for a long time. Though they have a heart for missions, these folks are new to the sort of local church outreach we bring. This is a common phenomena in conservative churches across the US. We have momentous plans to build a heart for our community into the mix this year through Servant Evangelism and ministry to the poor. The poor are never far away.
We are going to move out into the community in teams to engage the community…soon, but not quite yet. I have typically been a Ready, FIRE!, Aim leader when it comes to launching new things. I’ve not been cautious—I’m still not. However I’ve decided to not take that tact this time around. My vision now is to involve as many people as possible. I am going to begin with a solid prayer backing. Thus we are going into the community to practice prayer walking in teams of 3 or 4. It’s the basic discipline you may have heard of—going about the city praying under our breath, asking God to show us the spiritual state of things, looking for insights, then coming together to compare insights afterwards. We go out for an hour or so then meet up at Taco Bell for a taco and a time to download.
Too much prayer walking and the likes can be a substitute for obedience in outreach. On the other hand, not praying is arrogance—it’s activism without dependence upon the Holy Spirit. Let’s live somewhere in the middle. As my friend Bill Jackson calls it, the “radical middle.”

So much is riding on our capacity to simply stick with the plan—to continue to love our city into relationship with Christ. Success in all of this is not that difficult if we can just continue to show up in faithfulness. I am continually asked by people about new ideas for outreach as if ideas are the key. There are ideas available in abundance. One of my books has 101 ideas. One of my websites lists about 150 ideas for outreach. With a little bit of experimenting you can come up with a few new projects on your own. The Holy Spirit is a God of creativity. He will speak to you without a problem about how to reach your community. The greater challenge is perseverance. Perseverance is a big deal.

There aren’t a lot of moving parts to outreach. It’s kind of primitive when you get down to it. I think it comes down to showing up time and again in faithfulness. God is looking to us to continue to show up again and again no matter how we feel, not matter how bored we may feel, no matter how convinced we are that people aren’t interested in what we are doing. Funny thing…just about the time we are convinced people (internally AND externally) are turning away from us out of boredom, just then they are beginning to get the message. Funny how that works.

We went out to connect with retail shops by offering to clean their toilets. We simply walked into these places with our cleaning kits in hand and said, “Hi, we’re here to clean your toilets – for free – to show you a bit of God’s kindness.” Pretty much everyone gave us a funny look. They all said they didn’t want it – but I could tell they assumed we wanted a donation. I know they thought this. We had to say several times we were doing this strictly for free with no donations accepted at all. It was only after we had told them several times that this was for FREE and we weren’t taking donations that they lightened up. After that we were able to connect with them. We were able to tell them this was a way of conveying the love of God to our neighbors. They warmed up quickly after that.
The Church has a lot of work to do in this area. We need to get to work by conveying to the culture around us what we are about. It is common that people who aren’t a part of church (perhaps they are a part of church…) think we are all about raising money. It is almost inconceivable that Jesus’ followers would do something altruistic. We need to get to work by serving others in a big way.
At the same time this provides the Church with significant opportunities. We make a strong impact by serving in surprising ways. We are able to break through into people’s lives by doing simple, doable serving projects. I don’t have a corner on the market of ideas we need to be involved with but I have discovered a few things apparently connect with the watching world.
I pray for more hearts in the Church to be able to hear the challenge God is offering these days. I pray we can sense his calling out to the culture around us. As Jesus said the harvest is plentiful – it is the laborers that are few.

Picking up some great lessons in the realm of outreach lately.

1. Diligence. The race isn’t to the fastest or the most impressive initially, but to the one who hangs in there for the long haul. I am impressed that we have seen some great things happen in the area of outreach – as people are being touched they are opening up – we are mentoring the community in civility it seems. I am impressed that we are able to turn on the faucets and see people respond.
2. Indomitable spirit. We need to have a willingness to hang in there no matter how rough the going gets. I am convinced we are going to see God show up in a stellar way as we just continue to persevere. What is the goal of all of this? Isn’t it to fall in love with others who are different than us? I think so. I can’t fall in love with the people of the city unless I am around them on a regular basis – unless God mentors me in these things. I am going to warm up to them – I am going to turn on the rocket boosters of this machine in order to get around the people who are desperately seeking Jesus. They might not know they are desperately seeking Jesus quite yet, but that’s okay. I am going to hang around them until they get it.
3. Recycle lessons learned. I am seeing that the lessons I learned a time ago – a season or two ago – are still timely. God is able to resurrect those lessons into my daily life so I am able to pick up on the lessons learned. As Wimber used to say, “Old marching orders are good marching orders.” What I started out to do some time ago still works. Those insights are good, pleasant, helpful – I will persevere in following those out.
4. Emphasize obedience. It all starts with us humbling ourselves and going back to the things that Jesus spoke to us to begin with. Unless we obey his call – unless we walk out his words to us – we will not get very far. I am convinced he is calling us on a big scale to do similar things. I hear people tell me all the time that they have been called by God to serve their community. I also hear many tell me they have gotten off track in the original calling – they have fallen into building facilities, into strategizing budgets, into the notion of building facilities in the belief people will automatically gather. I don’t buy the idea that we are okay with the erecting of facilities at the expense of dropping outreach efforts. We are all about outreaching on a perpetual basis if we take the model of scripture seriously. Unfortunately many have been able to get by with that schedule – with the idea that as they serve a little or not at all. God operates on the basis of serving, outreaching = forward progress. God don’t let us see surface progress and confuse that with your God given momentum. I like the heart of Catherine Booth of the early days of the Salvation Army fame–she said that Jesus never called us to build and simply gather – rather he calls us to outreach and aim beyond as we gather the hurting, the impaired, the discouraged.

TODAY we have a super cool, practical teleconference on how to expertly launch your church into Servant Evangelism in 6 months. If you have found it challenging to incorporate an outward-focus in your church, feel stumped getting traction with Servant Evangelism, or are looking for a step-by-step guide (from planning your outreaches 6 months out, creating sermons to go along with the outward focused mentality you are striving to instill in your congregations, or the set up, break down and wrap ups of all your serving events) then you DEFINITELY need to join us this TODAY, May 13th at 10:30 AM PST / 1:30 PM EST.

Charlie Wear, publisher of Next-Wave Ezine, will be our host, and this teleconference is free for anyone to attend! Either listen in online, or dial in on your phone…your choice! For the details on how to connect to this teleconference, go to this link:
http://AttendThisEvent.com/?eventid=12775485

Soon after this teleconference, we will be releasing a 6 month jumpstart course at ServeCoach.com on how to launch Servant Evangelism in your church, with step by step instructions, checklists, tracking worksheets, outreach templates, planning calendars, outreach prep talks, sermons, and more! This course will be available to all members of ServeCoach.com at no extra cost.

We are so excited about how this will be able to help so many churches that are trying to take SE to the next level. Whether you consider yourself a beginner, intermediate, or advanced practitioner of SE, this course will surely increase your effectiveness. Look for the first month of material (and more info about it) coming your way soon on ServeCoach.com.

As always, we are constantly interested in hearing how we can best serve you, so please do not hesitate to contact us with your feedback.

I look forward to connecting with you soon!

Steve
P.S. For this Thursday’s teleconference, we have 250 phone lines available, and 2000 spots online. Almost 10k people will be getting this email, so you if are truly interested in listening in, be sure to get on the call a few minutes before it starts!