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Making Decisions for with Your Target in Mind

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church

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been exploring the ideas of vision for a church and if a church should have a target, what having or not having a target does for a church and how to determine that target.

One of the struggles for churches is to continue making decisions with their those they are best suited to reach in mind.

Here’s why: the church gets older.

All of a sudden, a church plant that started out reaching college students and single adults now are married, with kids. Families start attending. The crazy ideas they once had now seem ludicrous when you consider the businessmen, nurses, dentists and teachers that attend.

If a church isn’t careful, the leadership of the church will not have any decision makers who are the age of who they say their target is.

What do you do then? Make sure you have some decision makers that are in your target. 

For example, if you are hoping to reach 20-40 year old men, you need to make sure that some of those are decision makers in your church. If you are wanting to reach 50 year old women, you need to know what speaks to them. Whoever you are trying to reach, it is a good idea to run ideas by those in that age bracket, those who have a worldview different from yours.

The older you get, no matter how hip you think you are, you are out of touch. I’m in my 30’s and I feel out of touch with 21 year olds. This is why I spend time developing leaders who are in college, have students and singles in my community. I’ve even run some ideas by 20-25 year olds to see what they think of sermon or video or song ideas.

What I’ve discovered is they have drastically different opinions than a 45 or 55 year old. This is not right or wrong, it just is. And, if your target is clearly defined, you know which way to go.

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Preaching on Topics You Aren’t Passionate About

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preaching

If you listen to enough of a pastor’s sermons you will hear a few things:

  1. What he is passionate about.
  2. What he struggles with.
  3. What he wants to become.

Pastor’s tend to stick with what they know or like. If I had my way, I’d preach on a New Testament letter every time. Other guys would preach from a gospel whenever given the chance. A few will throw in some Old Testament wrath of God.

Sunday, as we are going through Galatians, we got to a topic that I haven’t preached a lot on. It isn’t because I don’t care about it or don’t think it is important. Truthfully, it hasn’t come up in any of the series we’ve done. It’s the topic of approval.

Now, we all struggle with approval to some degree. We all care what people think, to some degree. It is just different for everyone.

For me, my struggles center around control and power. I don’t care too much if you like me, but I do care a lot if I lose.

If a pastor isn’t careful, they will only preach on the things they find important. This can be good and bad.

It’s good because it should mean a pastor is passionate about what he is communicating. It’s good because his sermons will tend to be more thorough because it’s on a topic he likes or has read a lot about (because he struggles with it).

If you aren’t careful though, you will end up missing an enormous part of your church. Your church doesn’t have the same struggles you have. They don’t have the same temptations or history or baggage that you do.

Because of that, they need to hear sermons about things you aren’t as passionate about.

This is one of the benefits to preaching through books of the Bible. You can’t skip anything. Now, choosing to preach through Galatians, I knew I was going to hit the topics of legalism, approval and moralism. It is the theme of the book. It is one of the reasons we chose it, because we haven’t had a lot of sermons on those topics.

Pastors will also stay away from topics they don’t want to talk about. Maybe a pastor is more of a shepherd than a vision caster, so he won’t preach a lot about vision. This will lead the church to be aimless. Or, he’s a vision caster who can’t stop talking and no one gets cared for because he never preaches on it. A pastor isn’t an evangelist, so there is no talk on evangelism, just discipleship and growing. Or the other way around.

If you simply talk about what you like, care about, are passionate about or things you know about, you will keep your church from hearing all that God wants to teach them.

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How God Uses Your Work

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Graphic

Do you ever feel like you are wasting time? That you don’t make the most of your days?

Most people if they are honest want their lives to count, to matter, to do something important with them. Often though, they feel like they aren’t making the most of their life, that they are wasting away at a job they don’t like or in a major they wished they didn’t have.

What if, God wants to use you exactly where you are? What if God wants to use your gifts and talents that He’s given to you (as a teacher, lawyer, parent, coach, business owner, student) so that He’s glorified?

Sunday, as we continue our series Change, we’re going to look at Galatians 1:11 – 24 and see how God used the gifts, life and talents of the apostle Paul and how that relates to our lives and how God can and does use us.

If you or someone you struggles to see how God can use their work and life for His glory, for things that matter and make a difference or an impact, this is a great week to bring them to Revolution.

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

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How to Determine the Target of Your Church

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church

So far in this blog series, we’ve looked why every church has a target (defined or not) and why every church needs to have a target (and the benefits of a target).

The question then, if you believe me so far (and I hope you do as a strong leader who reads this blog) is: how do I determine the target of my church?

This can come from a variety of places:

  1. Who lives around the church you pastor.
  2. Who already attends the church you pastor.
  3. A group of people or segment of the population God has placed on your heart.

Here’s a question to ask that few churches ask but shows who God might be calling you to reach: Who are we best suited to reach?

 

The next question a leader or a church must answer is: Are we willing to do whatever it takes to reach this person?

This might mean some changes are made to the church, new things are started, old things are buried and not used anymore. This also means that you don’t alienate others. This is one of the reasons many churches shy away from being clear about who they are best suited to reach. This is important. You want to reach everyone, but you as a person, you as a church are best suited to reach a specific person.

As our church has thought about this, here are some things this means for us as we seek to reach unchurched people in our city, particularly men.

  • Sing songs men will sing. Men don’t want to sing a love song to Jesus and they don’t want to sing high. Men also don’t usually like to clap and sing (they will only do one). Most of our songs are low, mid-tempo and about the greatness and power of God. Men resonate with these themes.
  • Portable church. Being portable is hard work and tiring. Set up and tear down is also where the majority of men serve. Most men don’t want to teach, lead a class or greet, but they will move stuff.
  • MC’s and classes have end dates. Men like end dates and our culture is set around end dates. Too many churches have groups and classes that meet until Jesus returns. Men don’t sign up for that.
  • Simple church. We don’t do a lot, we aren’t complex.
  • No women’s ministry (or men’s for that matter). I’ve written about this before so I won’t belabor this point, but if you want to reach men, a women’s ministry will unintentionally stand in the way of that. You can disagree with that, and some people do, but we’ve found this to be an inhibitor to reaching men that we don’t have one.
  • Logical sermons. Men are logical. Yes, they like stories and they like to be moved emotionally, but not as much as they want to figure things out logically. Preaching emotional sermons to women is easier, which is why many pastors do it. It is why most pastors preach from the gospels instead of a NT letter. Yet, logic wins men.
  • Preach through books of the bible. Men want to see how something fits together. That doesn’t happen in a topical sermon, but it does when you preach through a book of the Bible. It also causes you to have to preach on everything. Men want you to hit the hard topics. They want you to man up and preach tough things and answer difficult questions and wrestle with them through doubts.
  • Resources to help men lead their families. One of the reasons men don’t lead their families or read their bibles is they don’t know how to. Men will not do things they don’t think they will succeed in. So help them. Give them resources to accomplish what God has called them to accomplish.
  • Male leadership. This will sound sexist and I’m not saying it isn’t: men follow men. It is a simple truth. This doesn’t mean a church should have no female leadership. In fact, if you don’t have female leaders in your church, you will be missing out on some great ideas and balance as a church. If you want to reach men though, you need to have male leaders that are worth following, men that other men want to be like. Here are some examples of a vision that we give to men for their lives: http://www.tucsonrevolution.com/fight/ and http://www.tucsonrevolution.com/versus/.
  • Always take a next step. Men are action oriented, they want steps and they want to take them, as long as they are clear. Every week, we challenge our church to take some kind of next step. It might be to come back, to follow Jesus, get baptized, forgive someone. It is always an obvious one (or three) from the sermon.

Is this a lot to do? Yes.

When we unpack for someone new at our church, who we target and why. If they don’t like it, they almost always say, “But I appreciate it that it is clear and you thought through it.”

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You Long for Blessing

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blessing

There are two great words in the Bible that describe the posture of our souls toward other people. One is to bless. The other is to curse. We are creatures with wills, and in every encounter with other people we will what is good for them, or fail to do so: we will what is bad for them. Blessing is not just a word. Blessing is the projection of good into the life of another. We must think it, and feel it, and will it. -Dallas Willard, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

Blessing is not something we talk a lot about in our culture, or experience or do. Our culture is more concerned about being right, putting others down, getting others in line, controlling outcomes.

Yet, blessing is something long for.

So how do you bless someone instead of curse them? Here are 4 ways to bless someone:

  1. Have a right heart. No one blesses from a place of pride or selfishness. It is a giving away. It might be financial, time, effort, care or love on your part to someone else. This is why it is rarely done. We bless people we think deserve, instead of blessing the people God has given to us. I remember when I got married and the pastor who had mentored me through college prayed over me. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life. Here was a man that to this day, I have done very little for simply because I couldn’t give him anything. He mentored me, showed interest in me, used his connections to better me and my ministry and he was asking God to pour more blessings on me. That’s a right heart. Giving, knowing that you will get nothing back. 
  2. Help them see who God wants them to become. Because blessing comes from someone, you are really helping the person you are blessing helping them see themselves as God sees them and who God wants them to become. This might be challenging a child to be who they are called to be. At the end of the day, this is vision casting. This is painting a picture for someone about how they are settling in life. Not in a negative way or a “stop doing that” sort of way. But, don’t you want more out of life kind of talk. There is a difference. One is negative that shows how much smarter you are and one is more helpful and comes from a place of serving that says, “I don’t want you to miss God’s best in your life.”
  3. Be willing to serve someone. Blessing is about giving something of yourself away, to someone. You may serve them, be generous to them. It might simply be words spoken to them. It will require you to take a step towards them. Blessing is not reciprocating. There is a difference. When I bless my children, I am not expecting them to give something back for it, or to earn it.
  4. Blessing shows someone where they have come from, but where God wants to take them. Each year, I write a letter to our kids on their birthday. In the letter, I highlight how they have grown this year, how God has worked in their hearts and lives, what has happened in our families. My plan is to give these letters to them when they graduate high school and go to college. I want them to have a picture of who they are, where they have come from, so that it influences them onto where they are going. In Scripture, when someone blesses someone there is usually a genealogy nearby in the text. This is a reminder of where these people have come from, their history. In essence, it is who they are, their identity. Blessing is a way of reorienting someone’s identity, helping them to see things more clearly so they are on track.
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Make me Approve of You

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book

I preached on the need and desire for approval that we all have. Granted, we all feel it to different degrees. In my sermon, I mentioned how my desire to win, to be right, to have power and control always outweighs my desire for approval. It is still there though.

This blog post may feel more like a confession that I’m letting you in on. Hopefully this will be an encouragement to you or you’ll see yourself in it.

For me, I was convicted how out of my desire for power and control, I can very easily make my relationships about my approval of someone else.

I can be good at putting incredibly high standards on people, making them feel guilty so they will ultimately do what I want.

This is how I control things. In the end, it is also how I can easily help people sin by gaining my approval.

It is interesting when we talk about the idols of the heart or the sin in people’s lives, we focus on the person sinning. We should. They are responsible. In doing this, it is easy to let the people off who cause the sinning. Granted, someone seeking my approval is not my fault and they stand before God on that. I stand before God on how I cause someone to sin or stumble.

That is on me.

As I think about legalism, the gospel, the idols of my heart and hopefully as you think about those things, my hope with this blog post is to get you to realize in your quest for approval, control, comfort or power, you cause others to worship their idol by your actions. In your quest for comfort, you might help someone seek even more control so things don’t fall through the cracks because you are so laidback and letting whatever happens happen. In your quest for approval, you cause others to seek power because you are willing to be a doormat to their sin and ego.

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The Slowness of God’s Timing

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God's Timing

In the spiritual life God chooses to try our patience first of all by His slowness. He is slow; we are swift and precipitate. It is because we are but for a time, and He has been for eternity…There is something greatly overawing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disquiet them. We must wait for God, long, meekly, in the wind and wet, in the thunder and the lightning, in the cold and the dark. Wait, and He will come. He never comes to those who do not wait. He does not go their road. When He comes, go with Him, but go slowly, fall a little behind; when He quickens His pace, be sure of it, before you quicken yours. But when He slackens, slacken at once: and do not slow only, but silent, very silent, for He is God. -Frederick Faber

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Why You Need to Define Your Target

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church

I’ve been doing a series of posts on churches and the target they have (or don’t have). You can read part 1 on the fact that every church has a target (whether defined or not) here.

Once you determine that you will have a target, the question then becomes, who is it? How do you define it? How specific should it be?

Before you can answer those questions, maybe you are still on the fence about this whole idea. Having a target as a church sounds like a business, or that you don’t like certain people or that you are catering to someone.

As I mentioned already, you have a target, it just might be defined yet.

Here’s what happens in churches without a clearly defined target:

  • Every idea is a good idea. If you don’t have a clear target, every idea has to be put on the table for discussion and kept on the table. You will struggle to say no to anything, because your only reason will be “you don’t want to do it” or “we’ve alway done it this way.” Should we have a drama team? A puppet team? A quilting fair? A small group for coin collectors? Should use drums? Sing hymns? Preach topically or expository sermons? The answer to the above is yes. Do it all.
  • People burn out. Which leads quickly to burnout. When you don’t have a target and say yes to things you should say no to, you end up with a busy church calendar.
  • No one knows what the win is, so excitement and momentum are low or nonexistent. This is why church is so sad to me. I talked to a friend recently who quit his job at a church after “asking for almost 2 years for the lead pastor to define the win for our church. I even told him if what I was doing didn’t fit, I’d stop doing those things. I just wanted to know what the win was.” If you don’t know what the win is as the leader, no one else knows. If no one else knows, no one will know where you are, how you are doing and if it is worth their time, money, and effort. Without this knowledge, they are simply showing up. And no one enjoys just showing up. People will do it for a little bit out of a sense of duty, but they will walk away soon enough.
  • Budgeting is often a battle. If every idea is a good one because there is no target, no defined win, budget meetings are filled with people arguing for their pet projects and ministries they care about. If you don’t define the win, people will make their own.
  • God moves in other churches. I can’t prove this, I have no data on this. I can only look at the church I lead and the times the win was not clear there is a definite absence of God moving compared to the times the win was clear. This is convicting to me as a leader as I think about Revolution. It spurs me to stay as clear as possible, to never let me passion wane.

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Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches by Peter Greer, Chris Horst (Bethany House Publishers, 2014)

book

Wess Stafford, President and CEO of Compassion International said,

I can think of many Christian organizations that have lost their spiritual commitment. I can’t think of one secular organization that found its way to a Christian commitment. Any leader who inherits a strong Christian commitment must shepherd the culture and steward that commitment.

In a nutshell, that’s why this new book by Peter Greer and Chris Horst Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches is so important. Having just preached a vision series at Revolution and going through a process of re-clarifying the win or why of Revolution Church, this book was incredibly refreshing to read, as well as incredibly challenging as I think through the task of keeping the mission clear, putting things into place to protect this clarity and keeping everyone on the same page.

The stories they tell of organizations who less than 50-100 years ago who were Mission True and had a clear Christian identity, to now simply collecting money is scary.

Here are a few things that stood out to me:

  • Without careful attention, faith-based organizations will inevitably drift from their founding mission.
  • According to studies, 95% of Christian organizations said mission drift was a challenging issue for them.
  • Mission True organizations know why they exist and protect their core at all costs. They remain faithful to what they believe God has entrusted them to do. They define what is immutable: their values and purposes, their DNA, their heart and soul.
  • Mission True organizations decide that their identity matters and then become fanatically focused on remaining faithful to this core.
  • If we aren’t entirely convinced that our Christian faith is essential to our work, then we won’t be willing to make the tough decisions to fight for it.
  • It’s often Christians who seem most likely to be the biggest critics of bold Christian distinctiveness in our organizations.
  • Mission drift is a daily battle.
  • Mission True organizations know who they are and actively safeguard, reinforce, and celebrate their DNA. Leaders constantly push toward higher levels of clarity about their mission and even more intentionality about protecting it.
  • The single greatest reason for mission drift is the lack of a clear mission and vision.
  • If leaders aren’t bleeding the mission, drift will always trickle down.
  • When we begin to see our priority as a growing ministry, instead of a faithful one, we sow the seeds of drift.
  • Leaders always act in accordance with their beliefs.
  • Mission True organizations find a way of stating and measuring what they believe matters most.
  • What’s not measured slowly becomes irrelevant.

Highly, highly recommend this book to any pastor or leader who works with a non-profit.

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When You are Most Likely to Sin

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sin

Ever wonder why you sin? What if there was a specific time that you were most likely to give in to temptation? What if you could see negative emotions, thoughts from your past, addictions you thought you were free from coming a mile away?

You can.

In his book Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You, John Ortberg shares this:

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has coined the term “ego depletion” to describe a level of fatigue that goes beyond mere physical tiredness. People living in this depleted condition report more tiredness and negative emotions, but those are not the only effects. Depleted people who watch a sad movie become extra sad. When facing temptations like eating chocolate chip cookies, they are more likely to give in. When faced with challenges like an especially difficult assignment at work, they are more likely to fail or turn in lower quality work. The brain area that’s crucial for self-control (the Anterior Cingulate Cortex) actually experiences a slowdown.

The reality is, you and I sin at specific times. Those times are most likely going to be when we are tired, worn down, exhausted. For a pastor, that is most likely on a Sunday night or on a Monday. We are tired at other times, but follow me.

When are you most tired? What time during the day do you feel the weakest in terms of your will to fight sin and temptation?

Let me apply this to pastors and help you understand why this as. I’ve learned while pastors are good at helping others fight sin in their lives, we tend to lack self-awareness.

On Sunday night you have preached hard, led worship hard, sat with people, hugged them, cried with them, counseled them, prayed with them. You have gone to battle for them and with them. You have had hard meetings with people who told you they are leaving the church, that you don’t live up to their standards of things, that you don’t preach the gospel, use too much Bible, are too deep, not deep enough and your head feels like it is spinning because you can’t please them all.

If you aren’t a pastor, you have a day of the week that simply runs you down. You come home exhausted, barely able to stand, let alone think and certainly not up for fighting sin and temptation.

This is the moment we must be aware of.

Often, the reason we fall into sin is because we don’t see it as a battle, or, once we feel tempted we feel like we have already lost the fight with sin so we simply give in to it.

Don’t.

When you see that moment coming, go to sleep, hand your smartphone or table to a spouse, pick up a banana, turn off the TV. Fight the sin you are facing by removing the temptation in your moment of weakness.

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