Transformative Discipleship: Prioritizing Church Health and Vision

well thank you great privilege to to be here with you guys got to meet a number of you already and look we're hopefully a meeting more of you before we get out of here I know many of you are coming as pastors of churches others as leaders in the church or maybe some parachurch ministries but trust what we talked about today might be beneficial hopefully you've got a handout they should be on your table there so if you'll have one of those it might help you don't feel you have to take any notes but maybe to follow along and at least you can tell what I'm getting through [00:00:00]

I am a person who says I'm not impressed with large churches we pastor a pastor a large church it's not an issue to me how big the church is there's one issue for me and that is is the church healthy isn't healthy if it's a healthy Church it's a good Church you imagine if I were to come in here a year from now and you were to come back and I were to be the obviously the same height but I'd gained 250 300 pounds and not a one of you would say wow how did he do that I'd love to be able to put that much on that quickly [00:01:27]

the model is basically a valuable valuable valuable tool to every pastor every leader if you think about what of what a model does a model Mary's vision to function if you don't have a good model you don't know really how to translate the vision that you have into the function of what God has called us to do so it's very very important to have that how do you birth the vision I think if you look at at pastors today I think one of the roles that God has given to pastors is to be a model maker doesn't mean they're a designer of model so you don't have to recreate anything [00:03:09]

the only thing that's important is that you attempt something so great for God that it's doomed to failure unless God be in it and that a great statement it's really a comment about what faith is now he wasn't necessarily saying I should do something big but he said it should be so big in your mind that it couldn't be accomplished without God being in the heart of it well my first thought with that I have very logical mind math major background so well I'm thinking oh well I don't I don't like failure necessarily I don't want to just run in something to fail and hope God was in it [00:05:22]

I do believe that if I spent enough hours alone with God and just saw his presence and said Lord I've got a pad of paper here I've got a pen or pencil in my hand and I'm gonna write down thoughts that come to mind that may well be prompted of you they may not be but as I sit in your presence and invite you to speak to me would you show me what should that be in doing that I spent dozens and dozens and dozens of hours and ideas would come then I'd say Lord now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna take these things I've written down and I'm gonna assume that perhaps in the midst of all of this some of these things are from you [00:06:20]

I want to have a good church I want to be gospel centered I want it to be Christ centered I want it to be Bible oriented I want it to be healthy I want it to be but there is no dream of what makes it become that now with that I think we actually end up choosing from different models we may be used of God to create a sense of direction in that model something that's very unique but I think if you look at our history I think there been four models that we have that have been before us and I will make this very simplistic and very quick so just kind of here the bigger picture [00:07:48]

the focus of ministry was to take care of God's people there was very little attraction to the outside non-believing world but if you were in the church or you maybe went to a crusade or you were got involved in a parachurch of some sort you might come to faith and you would come into the church and the church would Pastor you pastoral model then early in the ministry as I was pastoring now there was the birth of a what I will call an attraction model Bill Hybels particularly dear friend of mine we were coming up in ministry thrown together quite a bit in the early days and I was watching this new model that he was kind of exploring [00:08:43]

what about people that don't get attracted to the church what about people that need advocacy they need they need clothing they need they need mercy they need help they need somebody to fight for justice and in terms of the causes of which they're having to battle and often losing well what about these people and so all of a sudden there was kind of a new birth it's a birth of a model that I'll call an influential model that we're going to we're gonna influence the community and now churches began to say whoa so what we build a great successful appearing church but we're not impact in the community where we live work and play [00:10:23]

what if you have a church that's pastoral its attraction 'el its influential but it's not developing the kind of people that God intended his people to be and you didn't have the kind of of god-fearing deep abiding people of faith they weren't father's that were holy there weren't mothers that were godly mothers they weren't and the list goes on not and so we realize no there's a very important model and we're going to call that mama life on life model it's not a program it's not a even as the others aren't there many programs they're used and all those different how do you Pastor people there's a program may be used to help pastor [00:11:21]

I said Lord there's something missing in our church I mean we're growing it could be growing commitment Jesus and knowledge the word and not be mature and certainly not be equipped so we said why don't we take the the bigger umbrella and why don't we say that's the target then it led to this last exercise I said okay Lord if if that's our target to be making the tour and equip followers of Christ what does the mature and equip follower of Christ look like now there's no description in the Bible the words mature and equipped are both used most people who are very familiar with the scriptures as we would be here would probably come to virtually the same conclusion [00:13:27]

whatever your goal is pastor leader whatever your goal is define it so you know what it is so that you can go after it if it's in the lives of people and not just numbers and this or stuff that's pretty meaningless but if it's in the lives of people what does it look like what does that life look like and this was it for us right here now it's been it's been massaged a bit over the years certainly but this is basically what I came up with and I looked at this and I said now here is the question how many people at perimeter Church meet this description right here and I had to say I read that not a lot there were some but woefully small [00:15:01]

I have no idea because I spent the rest of my weekend I could not come up with I couldn't think of a church to go to I didn't think of anybody to go I said I don't even know where to go I really didn't know they looked at me and they said Randy it is your first responsibility from this point on to get the answer that question will give you as much time as much resources we can possibly give you you go find the answer and it was in the search for the answer to that question that we came to what I'm sharing now and just a quick overview so I'll come back to that story and we'll give you the answer but let me lay a foundation for it first [00:16:31]

the problem is we are telling people this is what you must do here it is now we're telling them now go do it and that's the formula that we're using and it is a terrible terrible formula the I was at a pastors conference and I did this once and I started repeating it when I saw it was interesting I'd say do this pastors would you right now right now I'm not gonna ask you to do it but I'd say would you write down five offerings the best offerings in your church that's helping your people go to the place of and I'll just use this term spiritual formation whatever that means to you what are the things at your church helping people the most in spiritual formation [00:17:58]

I don't see how in the church today you can really get people to spiritually form well this is one of the most respected pastors in the country he says if you can get people to worship well if you can get them to share their faith and you can get them to volunteer and serve people that's about the best you can do to be able to hit all this spiritual formation stuff in depth no I don't see how you could ever do it then you know what he did I mean it was just like feeding illustrations for me he looked at he said how many of you guys here has somebody in your life I'm talking about a loving but firm enough spiritual mentor leader that kind of took you under their wing personally [00:22:00]

if we as leaders of church can't correctly diagnose the problem of the church today how are we going to deal with it to make it healthy I don't think we can do it we have to address that question first so I would suggest that the problem is sin and I think every one of us would agree right but here's where I think we have one of the most for I don't know how to describe it maybe the most misunderstood maybe or little-understood issue of all Scripture and that is the problem of sin we don't really think about what it really really is Ephesians 2 is I have the text there I'll just I'm preaching to the choir now so I just simply read that first verse [00:24:23]

I love to think of sin as an addiction I don't think the Christian community looks at it as an addiction a problem but not such a bad problem I have a loved one I really don't have much experience in alcoholism never had any alcohol in our family and my history past grandparents past you know yet nothing so I just didn't have a close connection with alcoholism and then a loved one of ours became very deeply addicted this is not one of our children not one of my parents but very very close to us and so they had to go to rehab and they went to rehab and they called me and said would you be willing to would I be willing to come up and be one of the close friends connections [00:26:07]

I said I'd be happy to do it so I go under this premier rehab center in the country and I'm staying there for about two or three days oh my goodness did it hit me hard I'd meet a doctor that was one of the teachers up before the the people you know who are in addiction and he'd say like to introduce myself I'm dr. so-and-so and I am dr. John Smith and I am an addict I am an alcoholic I meet a woman let's try say I'm I'm Randy he said he said well I'm so-and-so I'm an alcoholic finally I'd say I'm Randy I'm a pastor I don't know what am I supposed to say you know what am i I don't know you're all you're all alcoholics I don't know what I am but you don't just say your name [00:27:00]

I use a little analogy here imagine that you've got a friend who isn't it just a fear close close relationship and you see something happening in their life and you suspect something's bad going on something's changing and you start crying a bit saying are you okay yeah are you sure that yeah I'm fine about finally you say I'm a thing almost I'm gonna step across a little relational chasm here I could cause some trouble but I got to do it for love's sake can you say let me ask you Jim are you an alcoholic and your friend Jim raises banks says I didn't know wonder what are you talking about Alka I'm not an alcohol I drink too much sometimes but I can control my alcohol I am NOT an addict [00:28:21]

I said you know what you need to learn to share your faith I said uh-uh I learned and I tried I will never do it again he's no no no no you need somebody to work with you personally he them used the words but life on life he took me with him when he shared his faith I listened to him he let me gradually start sharing my own none of the proves and leading people to Christ all the time just get to constantly leave people to cry I would have never believed it I was a disillusioned learners and folks that's the story of people in our church not just about evangelism but about holiness godliness everything there Fronda they aspire for in the Christian life they're saying I can't I tried I can't do it [00:43:20]