For about a month I have been singing the praises of the book Simple Church and today I found another person who is as struck by the revolutionary ideas presented in it as I was. His name is Tony Morgan and he is on staff at New Spring Church in Anderson, SC. Here’s a link to his post. I like his bulleted points from the book. I hope it encourages you to give it a read.

As I read my new book, Simple Church I have become more and more aware of intentionally plotting out the process through which we will be encouraging people to travel as a church when Horizon launches in September. What we came up with is the diagram on the right, and we have also noted how these levels fit into our mission. What surprised me the most is how new of a concept this was for myself and my team. I mean we talked about a process and in our minds the process was get people to come to church and strengthen their relationship with God, but then we realized that we had to be more specific about our process. So we plotted out this course of action for that will be stressed to every member or regular attender at Horizon.

I have began to think that more and more people walk into churches excited and ready to run the race, but they have no idea what direction to run when they actually get involved. Too often, I believe that we as a church downplay spiritual growth and maturity. We preach that people should grow at their own pace and get to the next level we they are ready, and while I agree with that in some ways I think that we need to constantly have the defined process at the forefront of our church member’s minds so they can concentrate on where they are going and what they need to do to get there.

I’m not saying our process at Horizon is perfect or the standard by any means, and this process may need to be changed or tweaked as we grow and understand more about our church. But, I’m glad we decided to define it for our church members. I would encourage every church leader to ask themselves these questions because I believe it will revolutionize the way that your church develops disciples.

Does your church have a defined process? How does that process fit into the church’s mission? What can we do to make our process more tangible for our members?

I have just recently started to read a new book entitled Simple Church (you can get more info on this book on the sidebar to your right). I have been really struck by how similar our philosophy and approach at Horizon is to the models they are preaching in this book. It’s really exciting to me to know that the simplicity of our approach will allow people to more easily follow the plan of discipleship we have set up for them to follow. I don’t want to go into much more detail, but I do want to echo these simple truths from the book that I think are “golden nuggets” for all church leaders.

Jesus came to this earth and to offer a faith that was easy to understand, simple to grasp, but hard to follow. Don’t put unnecessary pressure on seekers by making your church models hard to understand and follow. Preach God’s love and grace in simplicity and it will change your ministry forever.

The other day I was reading Breakout Churches which is basically Good to Great for churches and it discussed the concept of churches allowing the tail to wag the dog. Simply put this means that many churches allow their programs and events dictate the direction of the church. In a perfect world the vision, or direction of the church, would dictate what kinds of programs and events are done, but that’s not always the case. Then, one of the ministers being interviews for the book shared this insight. Some churches have a tail, but no dog. They have nothing more than a bunch of unconnected programs that are all entities within themselves and have no cohesive direction.

The more I think about that statement the more it scares me to think that there are churches that exist that have no sense of purpose, but rather all they do is exist to “do church” as it should be done. There is no vision, no mission, and no goals to achieve. The day a church loses sight of its mission and vision is the day that church starts its downward spiral toward eventual death. It sounds horrible, but in my opinion that’s how important it is.

Now let me ask you this. Do you know your church’s mission statement? Do you know your church’s vision statement? How many people in the church actually do? I think these are things that ever member should know and be constantly reminded of as we work together to achieve them.

Let’s make sure in our churches that the tail is not wagging the dog. And more importantly, that there is a dog!

Craig Groeschel who is one of the pastors of lifechurch.tv and has written a few very good books like Confessions of a Pastor has written a new book called Going all the way. It is all about helping people to prepare for a Godly marriage. I think it would be worth your time whether you are a teenager who is planning to be married someday be married or a person who has been married for twenty years. We can all use these tips to grow and strengthen our marriage, and I have a feeling Craig will lay it out and make it doable. Check it out.

Sometimes in ministry there are things that must be gaged that are not easily determined or measured. Matters of the heart that can only be truly revealed by each individual, and one of these is personal spiritual growth. Every church must be concerned about the spiritual growth of their people, but how can they tell if they are growing. In the past the most common way is to simply look at their attendance or involvement. It was, and still is, widely assumed that if people are more involved at church or attend more often thy are growing. Even when I was in youth ministry that’s how I labeled my spiritually mature kids; through attendance.

Well, stemming from an annual analysis of Willow Creek Community Church Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson have done some breakthrough research and analysis to break the old thoughts of how people grow spiritually, and what role the church plays in that growth and put it in a book called Reveal. When I heard about this book I immediately ordered it and basically sat at my mail box waiting for it to arrive. When I finally received it and started reading it I couldn’t quit. Now I’m not one of those book worms who reads a book in one sitting (never done it before) but that’s exactly what I did with this book.

If you are a minister, elder, deacon, or just someone who cares about how the local church helps people to spiritually grow do yourself a favor and read this book. It will transform how you look at your programming options, and how you lead the spiritual growth of your congregation.

www.revealnow.com

This weekend I started reading a new book by Charles Swindoll entitled, Improving Your Serve. No this isn’t an instructional read on most difficult part of ping pong, it’s a book about Christian Service. I tend to pick books to read in areas that I feel I need a boost in at the moment, and over the last couple years I have felt a real need to improve my service life. In high school I had to do it for Beta Club, in college we were required to complete 15 hours of service a semester to graduate, but now that I am not being forced to serve by anyone the pressure is off.

One of the things that I was struck by early in the first chapter was Swindoll’s series of questions about the neighborhood. he posed questions like. Do you know your neighbors names? Have you ever seen them needing help and helped them? Would you ask your neighbor for help if you needed it? Questions of this nature just blow me away because in our society the overwhelming answer for most people is NO! We don’t have to run down to the local soup kitchen or mission to serve, we can do it right in our own neighborhood. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

I think if everyone, including ministers, made being a servant more of a priority then Christianity would grow tremendously. I bet if there were a survey taken of non-Christians who have a bad view of the church most of their reasons would center around self-centered, egotistical, non-servant attitudes of someone they associate with church. The more we can do to dispel that image the better. Just my opinion.

This week I started reading a book that has been on my shelf for quite sometime, but I have never picked up. It’s by Max Lucado and it’s called In the Grip of Grace. I haven’t gotten very far into the book yet but the opening chapter shares a very cool story that depicts the common reaction people have to grace. It’s about a king who has four sons and through a series on events in which they disobeyed their father’s instruction 3 of the sons are swept down a river in to a distant and horrible land. At first they all have hope of being rescued by their father, but one by one they all forget these notions and accept their fate as punishment for their wrongdoing. This effects them so much that when their father sends the one remaining brother to rescue them only one is able to accept it.

Believe me, the story is much better in the book, but the concept still seems strange to me. Why wouldn’t someone want to be rescued from a horrible situation, like the brothers? Well, if you look at in the context of grace there are a lot of people in this world that think like those three disobedient brothers. They never feel good enough for grace, or feel like they deserve it. I have met several people in my ministry that have held fast to this train of thought. But what they fail to grasp is how crazy grace is. It goes against the grain of common sense.

I’m not saying that I fully understand God’s grace, I think our human minds can only comprehend so much of it, but I have always felt like I understood it pretty well. Then, one day I see it in a new light and the concept will totally blow me away again. I think it’s good to be continually floored by the awesomeness of our faith, and I hope this book helps me to gain more insight on the complex subject of God’s grace.

I recently started reading a book that a good friend of mine gave me a couple years ago called Making Room For Life by Randy Frazee. I’m not far enough into it to be able to give much detail on practicality, but I have gathered that because someone has written a book about it this has become a problem. People living lives without putting much emphasis on relationships or getting connected to other human beings.

In my small group last week we talked about how as Christians we are often too busy to stop and share our faith or even have a conversation with the people that we pay for our gas, or checks us out at Target. And if we can’t do those things are we really fulfilling our role as Christians in this world.

I tend to think similarly about relationships. I feel that if we can’t make building relationships a priority in our lives we will never fulfill God’s intention for our lives. Whether it’s because of our business or any other reason. I know this hasn’t been my biggest struggle, but being busy is one of my struggles and I’ve seen how little by little things can changed in a persons lifestyle, and I think all Christians need to remind one another of how unimportant those things we busy ourselves with sometimes are.

I normally don’t rant and rave about books that I am reading, but I just feel that this book merits a long overdue rant from your truly. For the second time I have started reading and studying David Faust’s book Unquenchable Faith as a study aid for Paul’s letters to the church in Thessalonica. I first read the book back in college and I really have come to enjoy Dr. Faust as an author. The book is a manuscript version of a sermon series that he preached back in 2003, and even though they are sermons they read like a well written book. You can read it in a couple weeks or so, and that’s really taking your time with it.

I just love to read about people, like Paul, who had such great zeal for the life and their life’s work. I guess I consider myself a zealous person, but it is very had for me to focus my determination and excitment on God’s work rather than mine at times. Recounting the advice of Paul to a growing church is very much helping me to regain focus. I mean, it often seems that Paul was worried about nothing but the growth of Christ’s church and the furthering of His message. It seems like an impossible thing to do to me, but at least I try harder after reading something like this.

So, if you are in a small group or a sunday school class that is looking for a great study then give this book a read. RANT OVER.