Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers

One of the most important roles of a pastor is to set the temperature for the culture of the church. Many pastors are like thermometers – they allow the church to set the temperature, in fact they let the loudest and most carnal people in the church to set the temperature. But what we need to be as leaders is thermostats – we set the temperature, and we need to set it to hot.

We need to develop a progressive culture in the church. A culture that is progressive means that the church is moving forward, growing, developing, maturing. A regressive culture is moving backwards, stuck in the mud, staying where it is, and stopping the church from crossing over to great overflow and increase.

There is a lot to say about this but here are three things that will always help you build a progressive culture in your church or organization:

1. Stop oiling the squeaky wheel. Part of what we think good Christian ministry is can be so far removed from good Christianity.  We think that the people who demand the most attention, the most immature, the most hurting, the most needy are the people we need to gather with, to meet with week after week and to spend time with. It sounds reasonable, but to be honest it isn’t. What happens is that these people never grow and by attending to them you are teaching the rest of your church that as a leader your attention is on those who are pulling the church back. If people want your attention, they will start to develop problems. The whole church doesn’t grow and it moves backwards!
   1. You need to celebrate the superstars in your church. Those who turn up on time, who serve without thought of reward, who love and go above and beyond the sense of duty. Then the whole church is pulled forward.
   2. You cannot emphasise this point enough.
2. Don’t worry about offending people. There are always people with thin skin. Either they grow up or they go somewhere else, either way, you win. Some people do not want to change, and it is going to cost you your peace to try and change them. Tell people the truth, let them decide how to respond and let them respond however they want. You can stretch to accommodate other people, but don’t stretch yourself out of shape or let other people dictate how your church should move. You are the thermostat.
3. Realize that whenever someone is trying to make you feel guilty or scared, they are using illegitimate authority. You are the one in charge, be full of love and grace, but don’t let yourself ever be led by someone who is making you feel guilty or scared.

This word is one of the seven Hebrew words for praise.  It has three meanings:

• To shine clearly
• To dance with passion
• To be outrageously foolish

Shining refers to us being happy about God and happy with God.  The word “Hallelujah” comes from this root – to be happy with Jah (short for Jehovah – God).  We should be happy when we praise God – thankful and pleased.

Dancing with passion is not forbidden in the church, it’s encouraged by the Scriptures.  God loves us dancing for him.  It doesn’t mean to dance with skill, but with passion.

Outrageously foolish could cover a lot of things (!) but the focus here is being foolish in love with God.  David danced with all his might – others might have thought he looked foolish, but he wasn’t dancing for them!  What would it take for you to be considered foolish today?

One of the things we are doing at Tree of Life is building a culture where there is both a high level of inspiration and a high level of challenge.

I have been in a number of churches and conferences which are very inspirational. The messages are designed to help us dream big, to paint a picture of a big God, to show us our potential, to help us see a bright future. The kind of talking that makes you want to change the world.

I love inspiration. I love dreaming big. I love preaching big. But if all you have is inspiration you will not function well. People will always be looking to a future horizon that will never arrive. You will blow up not grow up. You will end up giving hype not hope.

I have also been in a number of churches and conferences which are very challenging. All the preaching is about how we need to change, we need to focus on God, we need to stop behaving a certain way and behave another way. And it’s all true and all good – I don’t care how successful you are, we never reach a point where we have to stop making course corrections, or repenting to use the Biblical word.

I love being challenged. I love stretching myself. I love changing. But if all you have is challenge you will not function well. People will get discouraged making changes if they cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. You will throw up not grow up. You will end up giving people a stone not bread.

You need to learn how to both inspire and challenge people. You also need to learn how to create a culture that inspires and challenges people. You need to learn the balance and rhythm between the two – some weeks you might preach really inspirational, the next week a real challenge. You might get a guest speaker in who is inspirational, the next one might be challenging. You might have a Bible study on an inspirational topic, so the next one might be challenge. You need to learn when the people need the carrot and when they need the stick. You need to pray and get wisdom and flow with this.

Neither inspiration or challenge is enough on its own, but both together produces life changes.

We say it like this at the Tree: we inspire you to dream big, but we challenge you to live the dream too.

Last weekend we had the joy of hosting Arthur and Cathy Meintjes from Kingdom Life Ministries.  Arthur is now the most prolific guest speaker at Tree of Life Church, and the whole network of churches is better off because of it.  And this Sunday he brought a powerful message on the present day ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Some people may remember Arthur spoke at our first ever Gates of the City conference and has a lot to say about leadership.  Here are some lessons I have learned from him this weekend:

1. Leadership should always be in the wisdom of the Spirit.  We should never use fear or guilt to get people to do what we want.
2. We need to enable people to distinguish between what the Lord demands and what we demand.  When people are serving in local church, it doesn’t earn them salvation or spirituality or brownie points with God.  When we as pastors and leaders ask people to do things a certain way, it’s not to get right with God, it’s because we as the leaders of the organization want it done that way.  There is nothing wrong with doing things a particular way, and nothing wrong with strong leadership, but never let the people think it is to please and impress God.
3. When people walk out of your life for petty reasons, “don’t let the door hit them on the way out”.  Life is too short for silliness, we have to get on with the kingdom work.
4. God wants to talk to everyone themselves.  Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection was for the purpose that the Spirit could be poured out on all flesh so that all flesh can hear and follow the leading of the Spirit.  We must encourage people not to see us as great men of God or oracles and prophets, but encourage them to be led by the Spirit and learn to hear His voice for themselves.
5. Generosity should be part of our leadership.  If we cannot start at 10% and give what was demanded under law, we need to ask why are we not able to start there?  The idea that grace means we do not have to give and give generously is alien to the New Covenant.
6. Be human!  So many people are trying to not be human, and be some sort of angel when God made man and was happy to make man.  It’s not just ok to be human, it’s awesome.  Be yourself and be a human being.
7. Be practical.  It’s ok to dream big and it’s ok to have a big dream (you better believe that Tree of Life people!) but you have to be practical.  You have to make plans and think things through.  Before you go to war, count the cost.

 

We have just had the greatest leadership conference we have ever had.  It was so glorious, so free in the Spirit, and I have never had so many testimonies from a single conference ever.  If you want to listen to the conference, you can go to www.gatesofthecity.net and have a good listen to all the sessions which are online and absolutely free.

Our keynote speaker was Marie Helene Moulin from Good News Church in Nice, France.  She had a great deal of wisdom to share with us, so here is some that I have distilled for you:

5. Beware of loneliness.  Paul had his Timothy, everyone had someone in the New Covenant.  People had other ministers around them.  You need other ministers around you to keep you balanced and helped and sharp and on fire.

4. Some people will mistreat you and misunderstand you.  They misunderstood Jesus, they misunderstood Paul, and they will misunderstand you.  It’s how you react when this happens that defines you, not that it happens.  It happens to any strong ministry.

3. Learn to flow with the Spirit.  The Spirit of God will lead you to do things that might not seem normal or proper, but they will bring victory and life to people.  Marie ministered with a great freedom in the Spirit, and her ability to be humble and listen to him and let Him lead was something very special.

2. Never ever compromise the truth.  Marie preached on Sunday morning on how we cannot sit on the fence.   We have to live right and think right so we can change the world. Many Christians use grace as an excuse to live in the grey, but Marie preached powerfully on the need to live right and line up with the Word.

1. You need a company.  The Bible tells us to “taste and see the Lord is good”.  You cannot taste food via TV.  There are many many cookery shows, and they can all be inspiring and helpful but none of them will ever allow you to experience the taste of food.  The parallel is this: you can watch preachers on TV and there are a lot of good preachers on TV and on the internet, but there is nothing at all that can ever take the place of having a local church and being in the local church.  You cannot be properly fed outside of the local church.  The virtual world is not the real world.

The fourth of our cultural pillars is “Filled With Love”.  God is looking for a church filled with love, that loves one another as Christ has loved us.  That knows the love of God that passes all understanding and yields and allows that love to manifest through us.

Now this cultural pillar is something that I think all Christians pay lip service to.  We all want to be loving people, we all want to love people and we all want to come to a church that loves us.  But saying it and doing it are two different things.  And we had to look hard and long at how a church filled with love should look, and although there are several issues involved, the key issue for us has been small groups.

To me one of the most shocking verses in the Bible is this one:

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3.18)

You can read that verse in different translations, but it is always clear: we are not supposed to love in words.  We are not to tell people we love them.  We are to show them they are loved.  Why?  Words are easy.  The only true love is love that is expressed in deeds, and the Greek word for deeds is ergon, which means things we produce.

If you are doing something for someone that produces something for them, you are not loving them.  That’s a staggering truth, but it is the truth of the Word.

Now imagine your average Sunday morning service.  You worship, you give in the offering, you listen to the Word, you grab a cup of tea and you say hello to someone.   There might be hundreds of people in the service, but where is the love?  The guy making the teas has loved you.  The preacher has loved you.  The worship leaders have loved you.  But there has not been a place for you to serve and be served to be known, to love and to love.  Not fully.

But imagine a small group of people meeting in a house.  They can all love each other, they can all know each others name, they can all have dinner together, they can all share their needs and issues.  They can love, because love is in deed or truth.

At this stage people get confused.  When people see the power of small groups they often call for an end to big meetings, but nothing could be further from being right.   The early church met in the temple and the house and so should we.  The big group inspires us, gives us vision, gives us a place to worship and move forward whereas the small group gives us a place to love and be loved, a place to serve and a place to flow in the gifts.

So when we say a place filled with love, we mean that we are utterly committed to small groups and empowering those groups.  So that we can love truly, love indeed – in deed.

A big part of our culture in Tree of Life Church is building a church full of the nations.  Now if you are in a village in the middle of Kenya, then it is going to be impossible for you to build a multi-ethnic church; but if you are in London and you are building or part of a church that is only one tribe, one tongue and one people then you have no heavenly vision at all.

It disturbs me so much that so many Christians go to churches that 100% match their culture.  This is for three main reasons:

• We need as great a diversity in the body of Christ as possible.  When you get a splinter in your foot, you can’t get it out with the other foot: but when Christians have a problem, they go to people just like them – same nation, same gender, same age.  No you need a range of people who have wisdom and experiences that you don’t have.
• Unless you regularly meet people from outside your culture, your cultural norms are never challenged.  The truth is that in the UK and across the world the white church has problems, the black church has problems – but when we worship together we can learn from each other and build something strong and kingdom minded, not culturally minded.
• I wonder what will happen to these people in heaven.  I’ve had people leave Tree of Life because it is too black, because it isn’t black enough (their words not mine) and I wonder how they will get on in heaven because it is every tongue, every tribe and every nation!  Let’s try and do some heaven on earth – let’s meet up with people across our nationality.

A lot of people ask how to do what we are doing – building churches that welcome people from all nations.  The simple truth is that I just said we would do it, prayed for it and believed it and praise God it has happened.  Looking back, and looking at maintaining what has happened I believe we have 3 keys that we need to know:

1. Build everything on the kingdom – not nationality.  Your nationality and culture has some great things and some bad things.  That’s the truth no matter where you are from.  This means you will offend some people.  You will hear people tell me that you are going against their nation, their culture – you will hear offended people furious with you as they hold their traditions so dear.  But it will be worth it as you are building something that is truly Biblical.
2. Celebrate every culture.  We have leaders and elders that represent our church and our city.  We have a broad mix of ages, cultures and backgrounds.  Why?  We celebrate every culture.  No culture is perfect, but they all have something to contribute and teach us
3. Create a climate of humility.  The way you always have done it isn’t always best!  We have to show people that although their cultures are to be celebrated, they are not always right, and it is good to realize that.  Let other people teach you how they pray, how they fast, how they fellowship, how they minister, and be willing to submit everything to the Word.

We live in a strange church age.  We live in an age where the Pentecostals and charismatics shy away from the Holy Spirit.  They deny tongues, they relegate healing to a secret back room in the service.  Or in other churches, the gifts are limited (restricted?) to the full time super-anointed clergy where the laity are supposed to hear God via the priests.

Neither is a Biblical model, and neither is – or ever will be – the culture of Tree of Life Church.

Last Sunday – which was Easter Sunday – we turned up to our church to find out projector was not working properly.  We had no words, no videos, no high fluting multi-media.  I told the worship band we are going to have to do this without words.  I got up and told the church we are going to have to worship without the screen today.

We started singing in the Spirit, singing in tongues, singing songs from the Spirit of God.  Someone got up and sung a song in the Spirit, someone got up and sung the interpretation.  The presence of God was so strong that I could barely stand.  The atmosphere was thick with the glory of God.

It will always be our culture in Tree of Life that we flow in the Spirit, that we flow in the gifts of the Spirit, that everyone will be encouraged to be filled with the Spirit and flow in His gifts and goodness and grace.  The gifts are not for the clergy, they are for the body.

Obviously when you have 150 people meeting in a room, it’s hard to let everyone have a chance to move in the gifts.  Even harder when we start hitting the numbers we are dreaming off in Dagenham and other places.  That’s why we are so committed to our small groups in the church.  So we can get to know each other, worship together, study together but also so we can minister supernaturally to one another.

So how do you build a culture that is full of the Spirit?  That’s a big question, and one of the hardest we have to answer for a number of reasons – one, a lot of people are nervous about the Holy Spirit because of bad experiences; two, not all that glitters is gold – not everything that says it is the Spirit of God is!  We have had more than our fair share of false prophetic words, condemning messages and people trying to resurrect Old Testament ideas and drag them into the better New Covenant; and thirdly, because some people just don’t want to be in a church environment where the Spirit flows.  They like being in control themselves.  I don’t get that third one personally – when the singing began last Sunday, I knew I wasn’t in control anymore, God was, and I loved it.  He is the best leader, the best Shepherd, the best King!

So we have to ensure that we are policing the spiritual without being so heavy handed that no one is prepared to step out and give it a go!  We have to focus on small groups, we have to teach the Word and teach about the gifts and the love, and the goodness of God.

We line all our utterances, supernatural and natural, against three lynch pins:

1.  Does it sound like Jesus.  If you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father.  If a word comes forth that we cannot imagine Jesus saying, then we are concerned.
2. Does it sound like the crucifixion and resurrection has happened.  A lot of prophetic seems to forget about the cross.  We want the cross and resurrection to be the heart of our supernatural ministry.  It is complete, it is finished, it is done!
3. Does it sound like the Bible.  The Bible is the Word of God, and we want to keep to the Bible. We want to ensure that we rightly divide the Word though, and don’t bring obsolete covenant ideas into the better covenant.  We might not all agree on how it should be divided, but I think we should be all aware that it needs to be divided, and it is still the sole written basis for our faith.

We also need to distinguish between weakness and wickedness.  A new person, who genuinely loves the Lord, gives their first prophecy, and it starts off powerful and in the Spirit but they don’t know when to end, and it ends flat in the flesh.  That’s just weakness of the human, I wouldn’t even correct that publicly, I would simply love that person and maybe in private say “Learn to end well”.

But a lady who has come from another church (this situation happened to us recently), but still goes to your house group, gets up and prophesies death on our church, prophesies that we are all ignoring the Lord and that the Lord will judge us severely unless we follow her.  That is wicked.  It is manipulation, it is intimidation.  It is control, it is witchcraft.  It is taking the Lord’s name in vain.  It needed to be publicly and clearly stopped and exposed.  And it was.  And the lady left our fellowship.

But even with situations like these to deal with, having the gifts is ALWAYS better than not having them.  Learn to create a culture where there is a fullness of the Spirit, not an emptiness.

One of the things I heard again at the leadership conference I went to in Hull was to remember the importance and power of culture.  Dreams and visions are great – we need to set a destination, but we also have to let people know how to do what they should to to be part of who we are.  We cannot afford to lose our corporate identity.

If the senior leaders of a church, a movement, a group do not set the culture – others will.  And the people who will are the offended, the brash, the ungodly, the pain-filled and the divisive.  It’s hard work to keep setting culture but it has to be done.  You have to continually tell people what is expected and how you behave.  You have to celebrate the heroes of your culture – people who embody what you are and your corporate culture.

I want to try and do two things at once in this series on culture.  One I want to write about why culture is important and teach about how to build a culture, and secondly I want to let people know about our culture at Tree of Life and why it is important to us.  At the Tree we have 7 cultural maxims that underpin who we are.  It means that in a fit of carnality we still have something that is Spirit-inspired to confine and help us!

Our first cultural maxim is “Full of the Word, Full of the Spirit, Full of the Nations, Filled with Love”.  That is the four pillars of our church.  They are there to define us.  So when it comes to inviting guest speakers we ask if they line up with our maxim.  There are certain speakers I will never invite to the Tree – they are not bad, they are good speakers, but they don’t help us build our culture.

Culture is what protects a church from splits, culture is what makes church a happy place to be, culture is what stops us being offended.  It is such a powerful force.  And the first statement about our church is FULL OF THE WORD.

So we are deliberately building a church that is full of the Word of God.  So our preaching is central on a Sunday, the Word is central in our Living Churches, we have two conferences a year for hearing the Word, we support and give to Bible Colleges, and have our own internal Bible School.  The Word is so important – it is vital to us living by faith and knowing God.

Now there are voices in the church that don’t want to be a church full of the Word.  They might not express that like that, but their actions and values bely that.  They want the preaching to be shorter.  They won’t attend the conferences.  They never open their Bibles on their own time.  They do not want to be full of the Word.  They won’t ever believe the Word over their experience – if they feel sick, they live sick; if they feel offended, they live offended.  It’s just their feelings and experiences, and never faith.

Now what do you do when people come and their culture is not your culture.  This is the key point of today’s post.

Firstly, of course it will be the case.  Why?  Because they are new.  You cannot expect someone to develop instantly what you have spent years learning.  Bible College students sometimes struggle with this – they spend three years studying the Word and getting revelation, then they get frustrated that people don’t get it after they have preached one sermon!  So be patient.  Work with people where they are.

Secondly, on the other hand, we cannot mollycoddle people.  Our job is to equip the saints, and feed the sheep – not herd the goats!  Our ministry is to make disciples.  We have to inspire and challenge people.  We have to be non-negotiable.

So imagine after church someone comes to you (that’s a good thing, it’s when they go to everyone else that you have problems – but that’s a lesson for another post) and says “I think you preach a bit long on Sundays”.  They may coach it in different ways “A few people said that you preach a bit long on Sundays”, “You would keep attention more with a shorter message” or whatever.

So what do you do?  You have to empathise with them, you have to understand they are still finding out that the best way to live is FULL OF THE WORD.  Show grace and be kind.

But secondly, you don’t change.  You keep preaching the Word.  You keep standing up for the Word. You put a stake in the ground and you make a disciple.  You explain why the Word is so important and you stick to your guns.  You are the leader.  You cannot allow other people to sew their cotton patches on your silk vision. You cannot come down to their level, you can only reach down and pull them up to yours.

If you don’t know what culture you are building, stop what you are doing and start to dream about what kind of people who want to lead and want to pastor.  You then have to articulate what kind of culture you want.  Then you have to pray and look at how to implement and develop and protect that culture.

It’s the same process Jesus did with the disciples.  They wanted to call down fire from heaven, and Jesus says “You don’t know what spirit you are of”.  They had a great idea, but it wasn’t a God-idea, it wasn’t going to build the kind of church Jesus wanted to build.  There are times as a pastor, you have to say “You don’t know what spirit you are of”.  And lovingly and firmly show them the way forward.

More as we move forward!

In His love,
Ben

Just had the awesome privilege from being at a senior pastor’s conference hosted by Jarrod Cooper.

There was a lot of information and inspiration at the conference, and all the speakers brought good messages.

But the most powerful message for me was brought by Ken Gott, who I haven’t heard preach for nearly twenty years.

Here are 5 awesome lessons I picked up this week.

5.  Always do everything on the basis of prayer, not admin.  The hub of many churches is admin, when it needs to be prayer

4.  If you don’t climb the mountain and spend time with God, you will end up giving the people a false god.  Moses climbed the mountain to hear from God, Aaron stayed with the people, was swayed by the people and ended up offering the people a false god.

3. We must stop learning to live with broken walls and rebuild them.  No one living in Jerusalem rebuilt the walls as they were used to it, the had learned to live with the brokenness.  God doesn’t want us to live with a broken life, in a broken church in a broken nation.  He wants to rebuild.

2.  We have to stop living in the realm of compromise.  God created black and white, man made all the greys.  We have to learn to be hot not lukewarm.

1.  It’s alright to wear the robes of royalty, we are kings.  But like David we take the kingly robes off and worship in just the ephod, as a priest and child.  When we worship, take all the leadership skills, all the wisdom, all the achievements off, and just worship.  It’s OK to be more undignified than this!