A follower of Jesus Christ is first of all a lover of God.
But they are also lovers of people.
Here’s a sermon about loving people, from September 27, 2015 at Fort St. John Alliance Church.
Here is a sermon in the DNA of a Christ Follower Series. It’s about Trait #1, Lover of God.
This is a recording from Cranbrook Alliance Church, October 30, 2011.
What do we need to subtract in order to develop a disciple-making culture?
If we’re busy (and we are!) and disciples aren’t being made (and they often aren’t!) if we are to get to that place of “glorifying God by making disciples” we can’t just add something- there’s no room, no margin.
We need to subtract something before we add anything else.
And subtracting is hard. Far harder than adding sth.
Think of the difference between a Swiss army knife and a filleting knife. The Swiss army knife can do a lot of things, but none of them very well. The filleting knife has one simple purpose for which it is exceedingly well designed.
A church with a strong disciple-making culture looks more like the filleting knife than the Swiss army knife. Read More →
Here’s the principle: Whatever an organization or organism is actually producing, that’s what it’s optimized for.
Some options:
- We can optimize for the delivery of religious products and programs
- We can optimize to minimize the complaints of stakeholders
- We can optimize for the job security and financial well-being of the lead pastor (concealed as concern for the financial well-being of the church)
- We can optimize for coolness, for acceptability in the larger culture, or for status in the church world
At least those are some of the options I have considered and perhaps even temporarily embraced in my leadership.
What is the church you are a part of optimized for?
If we are optimized for something other than making disciples, and if disciples aren’t being made, we’re likely facing a situation where things don’t just need to be “tweaked” a little…
What’s the hard part of making disciples?
Another way to ask the question is, what’s the bottleneck, or the primary constraint?
What is the one thing that if we figured out how to do it our effectiveness in disciple-making would skyrocket?
Every major endeavour has a hard part, a bottleneck.
The hard part of writing a book is getting the first draft done.
In online marketing the hard part is getting someone to spend their first penny.
What about disciple-making? Read More →
Are Your Small Group People “Christians” or Followers of Jesus? Click the Book to Find Out!
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