Tag Archives: jesus christ

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Every Church Has a Target

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church

If you were to ask most pastors, church leaders or people who attend church, who the target of their church is, this is the answer you will most likely get, “We’re trying to reach everybody.”

This sounds nice, it sounds Christian and loving, but is impossible.

No church is trying to reach everybody. 

Here’s how I know: One, it is impossible. Two, it is impractical.

Think about it like this: the way people dress at your church, the style of preaching, the length of a sermon, the style of music, if you have small groups, MC’s or sunday school classes, the age of people on stage, the look of your building, all of these things decide who will come to your church.

One of the problems churches have is they feel like it is wrong or unloving to have a target.

Churches in the New Testament had a target based on who was there and they contextualized the gospel to their culture and target (who they felt called to).

What is incredible to me is that if you ask a company (Starbucks, Old Navy, Google) who their target is, they know. If you ask a church, the organization with the life saving, life altering truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ who their target is, they don’t know.

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Don’t Hide Behind “God Isn’t Moving”

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God

Pastors and churches often find themselves in a predicament. They want their church to grow, they want to see people start following Jesus, marriages saved, people get baptized, use their gifts, but many do not see that happen. What’s worse is when the church down the road sees these things happening, which let’s be honest, simply means they are preaching an easy gospel or at the very least, “watering down the truth.”

Recently, I heard a pastor say, “My church isn’t growing because God isn’t moving.” I heard another church say, “God just isn’t blessing like he used to.” And then they both talked about how hard our culture is towards God, etc.

I’m sorry, but these are simply excuses.

I know, the church down the road has a bigger budget, more staff members, better staff members, cooler music, they have a building, they meet in a school so they don’t have the traditional trappings, they are a church plant, they an established church so people don’t think they are playing church like a church plant.

Excuses.

What pastors and churches uses these excuses for is to push off having to deal with issues as to why a church isn’t healthy or growing.

If people aren’t getting baptized, why not? Is it unclear? If people aren’t taking that first step to follow Jesus, why not? Do you present the gospel each week?

When these thoughts creep into my mind and they do and have. We’ve had weeks at Revolution where I preached to 11 people, our offering was $84, no one responded to anything, we cancelled baptisms and went 6 months without seeing a salvation.

Here are a few questions for pastors, leaders and churches to ask when “God isn’t moving” the way they would like or think he should be:

  1. Is there any sin I or our leaders or church need to confess?
  2. When preaching a sermon, are next steps clear?
  3. Is the gospel clearly presented each week with a call to take that step?
  4. How clear is the strategy of the church? How clear is the next step for a person from sunday morning?
  5. How complex and busy is the church? The busier the harder it is to know what is important.
  6. Are you being the church God called you to be or are you trying to be the church down the road or the one from the conference you just went to?
  7. How clear and compelling is our vision?

Churches that aren’t healthy and effective often don’t have good answers to these questions. Next time, when your church hits a plateau, instead of giving up or getting jealous about the church down the road, celebrate how God is moving at that church and begin working on why God isn’t working in your heart and church the way you’d like to see him.

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Trusting Jesus with my Worries, Happiness and Stress

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trusting

Let’s be honest for a minute, trusting Jesus with our lives is difficult. I find it easy to trust him with my eternity because I often think, “I’ll be dead then.” But trusting him everyday, with relationships, my finances, those who have hurt me, my hang-ups and trusting him with my family and what stressed me out. That’s hard to do.

One of the things I’ve learned to do in this area has to do with how my day starts and end.

A lack of trust in Jesus often comes from a lack of gratitude and a false belief in my control of my life.

At the end of my day, when I land into bed. I spend a few minutes thanking Jesus for the day. The things he gave me, the blessings I have (kids, Katie, food, a place to live, a job I love, health and other things that come to mind). I also talk with him about the things that are stressing me out, the things that are weighing me down. Jesus tells us in Matthew 11 that we are to give him our worries and stress and that he offers us life.

At the beginning of my day, before I get out of bed I spend a few minutes praying through my coming day. Meetings, activities, the things I’m worried about for the day, things for my family. I give them to Jesus. While he already is in control and I am not, this a reminder to me of this truth.

These two practices have helped me to make enormous strides in trusting Jesus to put the pieces of my life back together.

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Loving People Who are Hard to Love

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Made for Glory

Do you have anyone in your life that is hard to love?

You aren’t alone. All of us have people in our lives that try our patience, rub us the wrong way, use us, lie to us and even abandon us.

The question becomes then: What do you do with those people? As a follower of Jesus, how do you react?

This Sunday at Revolution Church, I will be preaching from John 13:31 – 38 where Jesus tells us that we will always have people in our lives who will be hard to love, but how we are to love them, when we are to let them go and how this act of love allows us to live the life we were created to live. 

While the words of Jesus are simple and straightforward, they are hard to live out. Yet, the freedom that comes from knowing who to love, who to let go of and when to move on from a relationship brings enormous freedom. It also shows us how much Jesus loves us and what He wants for us.

Remember, we meet at 10am on Sunday mornings at 8300 E Speedway Blvd.

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Everyone Finds Jesus Differently

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jesus

While all Christians realize the title of this blog post is true, we often forget it. Many times, we fall into the trap that says: What rescued me, what impacted me to start following Jesus will work for everyone.

Many times, this is what is underneath our passion for more modern music, deeper preaching, life on life discipleship, a women’s ministry, a men’s ministry, a singles ministry. You name it. Whatever ministry God used to save you, we often think, “If everyone experiences that, they’ll be saved.”

The reality is that everyone starts following Jesus differently.

This came up in the passage I just preached on in John 9 this past Sunday at Revolution. You can listen to it here if you haven’t already.

The Pharisees are having a hard time with Jesus healing the man born blind on the Sabbath because they don’t do it that way. They don’t think God works that way, they’ve never seen it done before (vs. 32), or they weren’t saved that way.

I’ve had this conversation so many times I’ve lost count (and every pastor can relate). It goes like this, “Pastor Josh, we need to start a __________ ministry to reach ___________. If we do, Revolution will explode.” Or, “Josh, if we just get every man to do __________” or, “If we get every woman/student/single to do ____________ they’re life will be changed.” Or, “Josh if you preached more topical sermons, more deeper sermons, longer sermons, shorter sermons more people would get saved.” Or, “Josh, if we did faster songs, slower songs, more responsive readings, more hymns, more modern songs, if it was louder, if it was quieter, people would worship more than they do.”

Now, I’m not saying those things won’t change their lives, but we show a lot of immaturity if we think God only saves people the way we were saved or the ministry we are passionate about.