Raising the bar on vision…

i think this was a good start for the new series.  i had been looking forward to this day for months and i was afraid i had too much stored up…too much to say and not enough time to say it.  i hope that it started the ball rolling…

there are two things that really stand out as i look back.  the first is about how we are to connect with god’s plan (or vision) for his people in a particular church or situation.  when i look back on those early years of youth ministry at north point, there is no question that god inspired us to see beyond what was and into the future of what could be.  for me, that’s what vision is all about.

but that’s only part of the story.  that vision (of a room full of kids…growing and being discipled) could never have happened without the sold out commitment of like-minded leaders who shared the ownership of this ministry.  we pulled together.  we worked like crazy.  we saw what god saw and we weren’t afraid to put ourselves on the line for it.   we knew is was going to cost us our time…our energy…our money…our vehicles…our homes…our possessions…our sleep…our vacations…our days off…everything!

but that’s how vision is realized.

the other thing that most impressed me during my study and preparation was the realization that if people really wanted to have more of their time demanded, more of their energy demanded, more of their money demanded…they would probably be going to a different church.  after all, north point is a nice, friendly little church that doesn’t place too many demands on people.

that was yesterday.

BYOF – three

(my apologies…but i am posting this same thing on my other blog for today…just to make sure it gets read.  it’s that important)

sorry…i’m a little slow in posting this week.  

this was a good series.  i see more and more people opening their bibles during the sermon and a new awareness of the need for taking personal responsibility for feeding oneself.  mission accomplished.

i am continually amazed at our ability to understand (and even act on) the concept of taking responsibility for our marriages, for our personal health and well being, for our education, for our front lawns, for our baseball swings, for…well, pretty much anything…

except our personal spiritual lives and our experience with god.

we are so quick to complain about how boring church is…or how we aren’t feeling close to god…or how we are struggling with sin or doubt or anger or forgiveness or lust or temptation or any number of other things…but we won’t do anything about it.

people just drift away into ambivalence about their faith.  or they go looking for a better church.  or they complain about not being fed well enough.

why doesn’t it occur to people that the answer is sitting right on their nightstand?  why the reluctance to open the book, take out a fork and start shoving it in?

man, it’s time to wake up!

we start a new series next week.  i’m pumped.  don’t forget you can listen to the sermons online at www.npcc.cc (click on resources).  pass it on to a friend.

B.Y.O.F. – week two

in case you’re new to this site…or if you’ve been sleeping through the sermons the past couple of weeks, “B.Y.O.F.” stands for “Bring Your Own Fork”.  it was an idea that began this past summer as i was thinking about how to respond to the reality that people leave churches because they are not getting fed.  they are critical of the shallow teaching and gravitate to some other church family that teaches better and gives them more of what they are looking for.

i will never be found guilty of minimizing the need for solid bible teaching and the need for gifted and godly teachers of the word.  i have been blessed throughout my life with a few men who have opened the sacred book and showed me things that i could never have found on my own.  i will always be grateful for that.  but they did something more.

they inspired me to feed myself.  the best teachers of the word i have ever had in my life did not create a dependence.  they did not make me worship them.  they did not cause me to extol their virtue as teachers, in spite of the enormous respect and gratitude i had for them.  they simply took me deeper into god’s treasure chest and helped create a hunger in me that could only be satisfied by studying the bible for myself.

good bible teachers teach people why they need to study the bible for themselves. 

good bible teachers teach people how to study the bible for themselves.

good bible teachers inspire people to study the bible, in order to teach it to others…so those people will study it to teach others…and so on…

that’s god’s plan.  it always has been.

B.Y.O.F. week one

i have been looking forward to starting this series for quite a while.  my preparation started way back at the beginning of the summer.  it was good to finally arrive.

last week while i was away on my yearly youth pastor’s wilderness trip, we focused our attention on reading the entire book of john.  it is something that most people don’t get the encouragement do…let alone have the time to do.  seven chapters each day for three days.  we read.  we contemplated.  we chewed.  we thought.  we prayed.  we journaled.  we questioned.  we discussed.  

bottom line.  we fed ourselves.

nobody told us what to believe.  nobody directed our thoughts.  nobody spoon-fed us doctrine, practice, opinion, commentary, or their corner of the truth.  we just prayed and asked god to teach us from his word.

it was bold.  it was refreshing.  it was exactly what each one of us needed.  we all came up with different insights and personal applications of scripture.  we saw things we had never seen.  we grew deeper.  i couldn’t help but think that that’s what should be happening all the time.  for all of us.

i am more convicted than i have ever been that the person who complains that their church or their pastor is not “feeding” them is either a genuine spiritual baby…or a misguided whiner that needs to learn to pick up a fork and start feasting!

i know there are churches and teachers that are shallow.  i know there are churches and teachers that only give a token acknowledgment to the word of god.  i know there are churches and teachers that warp the truth or fill up sermons and lessons with opinion, conjecture, or out-and-out falsehood.  those churches and teachers should be called out.  if not, they will eventually receive from god exactly what they deserve.  that is not what i’m talking about.

this is all about healthy (or reasonably healthy) followers of christ who are growing up in age, but are still wearing a bib when it comes to the meat of god’s word.

let me hear from you on this one.