4 Hard Lessons for Measuring Ministry Success

Interesting read this morning:

We all know the drill. Faithfulness isn’t measured by the size of our church. It’s foolish to compare ourselves with others. A big church isn’t necessarily a healthy church. A small church can have a big impact. And so on.

Easy to say. Easy to write.

But it’s not so easy to take root in our soul. I know firsthand. In my first three years at North Coast Church, not much that we tried worked. Church growth was nonexistent. It was a season of significant depression.

Then suddenly, everything changed.

It wasn’t because of a turnaround in our ministry. It wasn’t a new facility or new people.

My depression started to lift after a spiritual kick in the gut. All I remember is a sudden and intense awareness that God was not pleased with the way I was evaluating my “lack of ministry success” and the church’s lack of growth.

He showed me that the thought process leading to my depression (Our church isn’t growing; it’s all my fault; I must be a bad person and pastor) was the same thinking that would produce arrogance if we ever experienced rapid evangelistic growth (Our church is growing; it’s all my doing; I must be a lot better than those who are struggling).

It shook me to the core. It was one thing to feel like I was coming up short of my ministry potential; it was another to realize that I had a deep-seated spirit of arrogance and haughtiness masked only by my lack of outward success.

The result was a complete realignment of my ministry scorecard. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1) Focus on the flock I have.

1 Peter 5:1-4

I worried so much about the sheep I wanted to shepherd someday that I forgot to care for the sheep I already had. It’s no wonder God wasn’t too keen on sending more of them my way to be ignored or used.

2) I can prepare the horse for battle, but I can’t control the outcome.

Proverbs 21:30-31

Like most leaders, I’m often quick to take credit for victory and quick to cast blame for defeat. But the fact is, especially in the spiritual realm, all I can do is prepare my horse for battle; the outcome belongs to the Lord.

3) The harvest is determined by the soil’s quality, not the farmer’s skill.

Matthew 13:1-23

Even with the best farming techniques, the best seed planted on hardpan will produce nothing. Some of us minister in great soil; some of us minister in rocky or weed-infested soil. It’s foolish to take too much credit or too much blame for the size of the harvest.

4) Do my best, then take a nap.

Matthew 16:18

It’s nice to know that the success or failure of the kingdom does not depend on the success or failure of my particular ministry. It’s not about me—or you. It’s about Him. He won’t fail. He’s God. And He’s got our back. We just have to do our best—then go ahead, take a nap. That’s all He asks, even when our board, congregation and peers want a lot more out of us.

I discovered I really could find my identity in Christ, not the size of my church. I could savor the incredible privilege of ministry, even when times were tough and fruit was sparse. Best of all, I found myself inching closer to a goal my mentor was constantly putting in front of me: “Jesus wants you to get to the place where you have nothing to prove and no one to impress.”

I’m not there yet. Maybe I never will be. But I am a lot closer

Mid-Autumn Festival

After 3 years in Quito, Ecuador, we finally found mooncakes here! :)

Although they do not taste fantastic, we are glad to be able to eat them during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Peiru, Jiexian and I had mooncakes with Chinese tea and fellowship together on the day of MAF.

Below are a few photos:

The box of mooncake we bought in Quito

Zoom in of mooncakes

Mooncake with Chinese tea

What do you think?

Why the Missional Church Will Fail

by Mike Breen

It’s time we start being brutally honest about the missional movement that has emerged in the last 10-15 years: Chances are better than not it’s going to fail.

That may seem cynical, but I’m being realistic. There is a reason so many movements in the Western church have failed in the past century: They are a car without an engine. A missional church or a missional community or a missional small group is the new car that everyone is talking about right now, but no matter how beautiful or shiny the vehicle, without an engine, it won’t go anywhere.

So what is the engine of the church? Discipleship. I’ve said it many times: If you make disciples, you will always get the church. But if you try to build the church, you will rarely get disciples.

If you’re good at making disciples, you’ll get more leaders than you’ll know what to do with. If you make disciples like Jesus made them, you’ll see people come to faith who didn’t know Him. If you disciple people well, you will always get the missional thing. Always.

We took 30 days and examined the Twitter conversations happening. We discovered there are between 100-150 times as many people talking about mission as there are discipleship (to be clear, that’s a 100:1). We are a group of people addicted to and obsessed with the work of the Kingdom, with little to no idea how to be with the King. As Skye Jethani wrote in his Out of Ur post a little while back “Has Mission become an Idol?”:

Many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God.

Look, I’m not criticizing the people who are passionate about mission…I am one of those people. I was one of the people pioneering Missional Communities in the 1980′s and have been doing it ever since. This is my camp, my tribe, my people. But it has to be said: God did not design us to do Kingdom mission outside of the scope of intentional, biblical discipleship and if we don’t see that, we’re fooling ourselves. Mission is under the umbrella of discipleship as it is one of the many things that Jesus taught his disciples to do well. But it wasn’t done in a vacuum outside of knowing God and being shaped by that relationship, where a constant refinement of their character was happening alongside of their continued skill development (which included mission).

The truth about discipleship is that it’s never hip and it’s never in style…it’s the call to come and die; a “long obedience in the same direction.” While the “missional” conversation is imbued with the energy and vitality that comes with kingdom work, it seems to be missing some of the hallmark reality that those of us who have lived it over time have come to expect: Mission is messy. It’s humbling. There’s often no glory in it. It’s for the long haul. And it’s completely unsustainable without discipleship.

This is the crux of it: The reason the missional movement may fail is because most people/communities in the Western church are pretty bad at making disciples. Without a plan for making disciples (and a plan that works), any missional thing you launch will be completely unsustainable. Think about it this way:Sending people out to do mission is to send them out to a war zone. Discipleship is not only the boot camp to train them for the front lines, but the hospital when they get wounded and the off-duty time they need to rest and recuperate. When we don’t disciple people the way Jesus and the New Testament talked about, we are sending them out without armor, weapons or training. This is mass carnage waiting to happen. How can we be surprised that people burn out, quit and never want to return to the missional life (or the church)? How can we not expect people will feel used and abused?

There’s a story from World War II where The Red (Russian) Army sent wave after wave of untrained, practically weaponless soldiers into the thick of the German front. They were slaughtered in droves. Why did they do this? Because they knew that eventually the German soldiers would run out of ammunition, creating an opportunity for the Red Army to send in their best soldiers to finish them off. The first wave of untrained soldiers were the best way of exhausting ammunition, leaving their enemy vulnerable. While this isn’t a perfect analogy, I sense this is a bit like the missional movement right now. We are sending bright-eyed civilians into the battle where the fighting is fiercest without the equipping they need, not just to survive, but to fight well and advance the Kingdom of their dad, the King.

The missional movement will fail because, by-and-large, we are having a discussion about mission devoid of discipleship. Unless we start having more discussion about discipleship and how we make missionaries out of disciples, this movement will stall and fade. Any discussion about mission must begin with discipleship. If your church community is not yet competent at making disciples who can make disciples, please don’t send your members out on mission until you have a growing sense of confidence in your ability to train, equip and disciple them.

Here are some questions I have leaders I’m working with ask regularly:

• Am I a disciple?
• Do I know how to disciple people who can then disciple people who then disciple people, etc? (i.e. does my discipleship plan work?)
• Does our discipleship plan naturally lead all disciples to become missionaries? (not just the elite, Delta-seal missional ninjas)

5 Truths about your ministry calling (Perry Noble)

Right now in my personal time with God, I am journeying through the Gospels…and the other morning (while in the book of Mark), several realities overwhelmed me as I readMark 3:13-19. (I would ask you to read that text before you read the rest of this post, trust me!)

1. He called me to be in ministry because He wanted me on His team, (Mark 3:13 – “and called to him those he wanted…”) WHOA! I didn’t choose Him…He chose me; that thought completely overwhelms me as there was NOTHING in me that was worthy of His calling on my life. (It wasn’t my greatness…it was and is HIS!!!)

2. The primary thing this text teaches is that He called me and appointed me that I might be with Him. (See Mark 3:14, the FIRST thing Scripture says after He appointed them as Apostles is that He did so “that they might be with Him.”) Vision and power are the direct results of a leader's personal time with the Lord…and we can never become so busy doing ministry that we fail to spend time with the One who called, gifted, anointed, and empowered us to do so in the first place.

3. In Him, I have direction to do what He wants…and the authority to do it. (Mark 3:14-15) Notice He gave them specific directions as to what to do (the result of time with Him) and with those directions came the authority to do so. God will never give us a vision to do something great without the ability to do exactly what He has asked us to do.

4. Jesus knew every stupid, foolish, selfish, and sinful decision I would ever make…and yet He chose to call me and use me anyway (Mark 3:16-19). As you read over the list of men Jesus chose to be Apostles, keep in mind that every one of these men abandoned Him when He was arrested and ultimately denied Him. He knew this when He chose them…and yet He chose them anyway. God did not call me into ministry because I’m that good…but because HE’S THAT GOOD. He knew the mistakes I would make and yet He chose me anyway. This absolutely causes me to well up inside with a sense of overwhelming gratitude…because if my calling were based on performance, I would be in so much trouble. However, reality is that I am in ministry as the result of God’s mercy on me (II Corinthians 4:1)!

5. God’s not finished with me yet (and He’s not through with you either!) Mark 3:13-19 is only the BEGINNING of what God had in store for these men. They had no idea what they were going to be able to see and participate in. AND…I am quite sure that they HAD NO IDEA when they said “yes” to the Carpenter’s call that they would have ever believed the scene we see in Revelation 21:9-14!!! Jesus ALWAYS has more in store than we could ever imagine!!!

Wedding photos

Found a few wedding photos on Karen's handphone when she attended my wedding about 4 years ago:

My beautiful and lovely bride

Serving tea to my mother

My family and relatives with us

An insightful read

4 Ways to Lead Like Jesus

by Perry Noble

I believe Jesus was the best leader that has ever lived. Seriously, look at what HE accomplished with just three years of a public ministry…it’s STILL impacting people all over the world. In today’s post…I wanted to cover four things (and there ARE way more than four) that I believe Jesus did that made Him an effective leader.

#1 – Jesus Spent Time With His Inner Circle

The idea that the leader cannot be close with the people he works with simply isn’t Christ like. Jesus did not isolate Himself from “his staff,” but rather He did life and ministry with them. The leader who is afraid to be known by the people he has been called to serve with is in a dangerous place as he either thinks himself better than them or is quite possibly trying to hide something from them. Jesus didn’t lead through fear…He led through relationships and these only become stronger as we spend time with one another. In fact, He actually called them His friends (see John 15:15.) If Jesus can be friends with His “staff”, then why can’t we do the same?

#2 – Jesus Was More About Who His Followers Were Becoming Than What They Were Doing

If a leader cares more about the work his staff produces rather than the fruit that the Lord is producing in them, then he will often put his team in a dangerous place because he will attempt to DRIVE them through his agenda rather than attempt to lead them through the Lord’s agenda. He knew if they developed fully devoted hearts for Him that the quality of their work would show it!

#3 – Jesus Was Patient With Those Closest To Him

As we read the Gospels we never see Jesus going on a rant against His disciples. Sure, there are places where He offers correction and/or rebuke…but this is the exception, NOT the rule…and He does not go on and on for chapter after chapter. He addresses the issue and then moves on. He approaches His “staff” with a patient attitude and does not assume that just because someone makes a mistake that they are either disloyal to Him or simply an idiot who is incapable of doing anything signifiant. A leader that is always losing his/her temper with others because “they don’t get it” usually does not realize that the reason many people don’t “get it” isn’t because they are lacking intelligence but rather because they haven’t been led well.

(And…btw…when Peter “blew it” by denying Christ…Jesus did not write him off or “fire him,” he went from Jerusalem to Galilee to find him and restore him to the ministry! See John 21! Great leaders don’t look to fire people first…they look to walk them through the mistake and restore them!)

#4 – Jesus Was Not Paranoid

One of the craziest things that takes place in Christian leadership circles is the incredibly insane idea that a leader always needs to be paranoid about which staff are and are not with him…and who might ultimately betray him. Jesus KNEW He was going to be betrayed by Judas…and yet that did not distract Him from what God had called Him to do. (In fact, I would argue that Judas’ betrayal ultimately led to Jesus moving into a greater place!!!)

If you are in leadership long enough someone WILL betray you…it will hurt; however, that does not give us an excuse to run around and constantly create an atmosphere of fear and doubt on our staff and call everything that we don’t like or perceive as an attack against an idea we might have as “disloyal.”

The better question for a leader to ask is NOT, “are these people for me,” but rather, “am I for these people?” Because…if a staff knows that the leader loves them, that he wants the best for them and is willing to fight to lead them, love them and be patient with them, then betrayal is far less of a threat than the leader who is always freaking out about who might and might not be fully sold out to the vision.

Date with my wife

Peiru and I took a break from work and ministry on Monday night. We went to a restaurant to have dinner and surprisingly there was live piano music. We really enjoyed the ambience in the restaurant. Below are a few photos:

The table by the window

My beautiful wife

The white piano and I