Better Roads...jump on!

The other day I flew into Dallas and needed to get on the 121 freeway, I could see it, but for the life of me I could not figure out how to get on it. I could see it, but all I did was circle around it wondering how to get on it. Have you ever had that happen? Many leaders in the church have had to deal with a person coming with a great idea for a ministry, only to realize they have no idea or knowledge of how to do it. Just buy a book it will tell you how to do small groups, evangelism, discipleship, etc.right? No!

If those same leaders ignore the pressure for success for a moment; and look outside the walls of their churches, they will see a huge number of organizations already in place.  You name the target group and there are Christian organizations positioned to minister to them, prisoners, addicts, mothers of preschoolers, motorcycle riders, athletes, internationals and the list just goes on and on.

The Freeways are in place, we just have to know what roads connect with them.  And unlike the freeways in most American cities these ministry freeways are not crowded at all.  They have far more capacity to engage lay ministers with their target group than they are now using. The biggest mission challenge of the 21^st century church is to connect with the current ministry freeways. The freeways are the fast track to unleashing the ministry passions of millions of church members.

It doesn't make sense!

I have been sad to travel around and see churches starting programs based on ideas they did not think of. Jim Collins calls them silver bullets. Hoping it will be the answer, the answer is what does God want you to do? It won't make sense....really. 

 

One of the disconcerting things about ministry passion is that it often doesn’t make sense. For example, it didn’t make sense that the former presidential cabinet member, Chuck Colson, start a new Prison Ministry.  Sure he spent a short time in prison for his part in the Watergate scandal, but with his credentials it made much more sense for him to start a ministry for “up & outers” rather than “down & outers.”

In his book Born Again, he says that many of his friends tried to talk him out of investing his life in a ministry to prisoners.  But Colson’s passion was inexplicably stirred by those who are in prison. God’s call to ministry does not have to make sense, (and often it doesn’t); it just has to stir our passions.

Ask yourself this, does it stir your passion...your passion. I have a passion to mentor young leaders...I can do it in the church, in the street or in a business, nothing sacred about doing it a church, in fact Jesus would tell you to be in the world...