10 Ways to Keep People Engaged in Your Message

1. Be real.

Let people see the actual human inside you. Most times, that will occur through your personal stories.

2. Talk like normal people talk.

I didn’t grow up in the church, so I don’t understand when you talk with a Christian accent.

3. Use humor.

If you don’t make me laugh, I’m probably going to tune you out. By the way, the best humor is revealed through your everyday life.

4. Don’t tell me what to think.

Lead me on the journey toward truth, but let me reach my own conclusions. In other words, don’t try to sell it.

5. Be honest.

If I think you’re credible, there’s a better chance I’ll think your message is credible.

6. Avoid being too polished.

In fact, I love it when you leave your prepared statements and share anything off the cuff.

7. Reveal your weaknesses.

As silly as it may seem, it makes me smile when I hear about your mistakes. It helps me to respect the areas where you are gifted.

8. Be brief.

Shorter is better. I’m probably only going to remember one or, at the most, two things that you say.

9. Make me smart.

I don’t care how smart you are, but I like it when you make me feel smart. That’s easier when you use small words and make it easy for me to apply what you’re teaching.

10. Tell me why I should care.

Help me understand why I should listen. If you don’t help me understand why it’s relevant to my life, I’ll tend to be thinking about my next blog post or my next tee time or my favorite 80s slow dance songs.

I’ve never had a seminary course on preaching, so I really don’t know anything about what it takes to prepare a good sermon. I think I’m pretty knowledgeable, though, when it comes to keeping people like me alert and engaged. Hopefully, this helps you help people like me.

Prayer after ministry

"Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray." Mark 6:45-46

I think God has been speaking to me about prayer recently. After feeding the thousands, Jesus dismissed the crowd and made his disciples to get into the boat to leave before him. He was all alone and then he went up on a mountainside to pray. Jesus did not only pray in the morning but also after ministering to people.

I need to follow Jesus' example more - not only pray in the morning, but also after ministry, alone! I need to draw strength from God and continue to pray for His people.

Jesus walked on water after that. Wow!

Conviction to pray early in the morning

I was reading the bible and doing my journal this morning, and God spoke to me from a verse in Mark 1:35: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed." It was interesting to note that before he was praying, he was teaching with authority and healing many people. And after Jesus prayed in a solitary place, he continued to preach and heal and cast out demons. We can see where Jesus received his power for ministry - through seeking God and prayer. I am convicted to spend time with God in prayer early in the morning and pray through my activities in the day as I want to see God's hand moving when I minister.

I also read an article on prayer this week which i find rather helpful. It is about how to pray for our church:

I'm realizing ever more the need, my need, for God's help in serving the church. I'm realizing the need for us to fall on our faces before the Lord. Only God can grow the church. So, as you consider how to make your church better, here are five ways to help your church.

1) Pray for your pastor. I know this is cliche. I know people pray for me. But I really, really need prayer. And your pastor does too. He may not ask you for it. He may seem strong and courageous and "with it" all the time. But underneath that is a fragile, desperate soul often squeezed by the pressures of serving God's people. So pray for faithfulness, refreshment, wisdom, creativity, humility, people skills. I never fully realized the need to pray for pastors until I actually became one.

2) Pray for the pastor's wife. This is a tough role. There is really no template for the pastor's wife. She's thrust into a role that often asks more of her than she can handle. She's the one keeping the home life somewhat normal and consistent. She's the one holding things together when the pastor is at the bedside or meeting with someone in crisis. And sometimes the pastor's family has their own crises that need prayer. Pray for your pastor's wife.

3) Pray for God's spirit to move in the hearts of people in the community. In our community, something like 85% of people are unchurched, likely unconverted. That's a huge mission field. And it seems that with every passing day the church is becoming less of a factor in people's lives. Pray that your church would be a lighthouse, a place where people discover the eternal truths of the gospel, where the Word would shine and the Spirit would convict hearts to repentance. Sometimes we get so program-oriented that we forget to pray for a mighty moving of the Spirit.

4) Pray for unity among God's people. The devil loves to divide and conquer. He loves to sow seeds of strife in a church. He loves to prey on the natural, human, sinful tendencies of God's good people. Unity has to be intentional. It's not natural. It must be a spirit-connected thing. It's fragile. And here's a secret. If you are praying for church unity, you will be spending less time focusing on the hurts and faults of others that moves to destroy that unity.

5) Pray for the church staff and leadership. Don't just pray for the pastor, as if he's the only one who is on the front lines, as if he's the only important, exalted member serving your local body. He isn't. Pray also and earnestly for the paid and volunteer staff, for the leadership team -- elders, deacons, team leaders. Pray for their families, their spirituality, their faithfulness. Pray for God to enrich and refresh them and give them strength for His work.

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!!!