Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers

In this message Benjamin explains the process of starting a local church out of nothing and why God puts apostles in the church first and what that actually means.

Every Sunday morning when we release the children I remind the parents that all our children’s workers have DBS’s, that we follow all the Home Office guidelines in caring for children, that they need to ensure they keep the counterpart sticker to their child’s sticker so they can pick them up again at the end of the service.

I then remind the children of one thing as we release them to the other cinema screen: walk, don’t run.  30-40 children running together is a recipe for disaster.  

When it comes to leadership and taking others where they need to go, this should also be the policy: walk, don’t run.

The Bible never has anything to say about sprinting in the Spirit.  It has a lot to say about walking in the Spirit.  Walking is something that you can do everyday.

Leaders are often challenged by the needs of the many and the press of the urgent.  Stephen Covey talks about the tyranny of the urgent pressing out the important things that have to be done.  How many people miss church services where they can worship together, get equipped by the Word, have great fellowship and see the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit – one of the single most important parts of your life – because they are the mercy of the press of the urgent or cannot prioritize properly.

Look at your schedule – if you are running you will not be able to keep up that pace, you are going to get exhausting, you may fall, you may bump into others.  You need to change things so you are walking not running.

Here are 5 simple tips to help you maintain a schedule that involves walking not running:

1.  Look at every task that has to be done.  If it can be done in under 5 minutes, just do it there and then.  If an email comes in, and a simple reply solves it – then give the reply.  Do it now!  Get it done!  If it takes longer than 5 minutes, then you need a system to both remember and prioritize your tasks.  There are many apps on the iPad or mobile phone that will do this, a diary or to-do list will also be another way.  I use an app called Any.do for ongoing tasks, tasks that have to be done regularly as it remembers them all for me.  Things like packing the car for Tree of Life Watford and what needs to go in the car, paying certain bills, payroll, writing sermons, preparing the church newsletter, even updating this blog – they are all in the app as they happen regularly.  Then every morning, I make a pen and paper to-do list from that app, and from what I know I have to do.  I then star the important tasks – not the urgent ones – the important ones, and I start doing.  There is something very satisfying about scoring out a task on a piece of paper that an app doesn’t do quite yet!

2. Don’t try and multi-task.  I know that men can’t and women can is the established idea but the truth is no-one can well.  You do one task and work on that.  Shut down Gmail and Facebook, you can come back to that later – no email is *that* urgent.

3. Rest.  Concentration wanes.  So work on 50 minutes work and 10 minutes rest.  That is more productive than working the whole hour.  In your ten minute rest, go for a walk, stretch, think, pray, do push ups – anything other than sit down and do work!  

4. Remember time collating the tasks and planning what to do is time well spent.  Sometimes things as you plan make more sense.  Sometimes you feel so busy you have to get stuck in – no step back and plan and prioritize.

5.  Delegate.  I know in some places and positions that is impossible, but in church it’s very rarely that way.  There are many people keen to help, keen to get stuck in and keen to help.  Learn how to push the tasks down the line, and if you get a task come your way that you can delegate – delegate it there and then.  

5. Delegate more and more and more.  The people love to serve and will constantly surprise you by the input they will put in to a conference if they can see that their work is actually making a difference in people’s lives.  Not only that it means you can focus on receiving the Word from the guest speakers and ensuring your message impacts as many people as possible as deeply as possible.  Of course, this comes from a church culture of delegation, service and raising leaders.

4. Invest in the worship as much as the preaching.  It makes such a difference to the preachers and those being preached too.

3. Integrate the conference into the life of the church.  We preached on preparing for conference the week before and then last Sunday I preached on how to keep the conference high for the rest of your life.  The conference is called HEAL THE NATIONS, which is from a Scripture “the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations”.  That is why we are doing it – to reach as far as we can to dream big and impact nations.  The speakers are speakers who have all spoken at the local church (with one exception but that was just time constraints).  It is a bigger deal than Sunday morning but it has the same DNA.  A mistake I made this year that I can see clearly now is that we did not consistently have declarations every service.  Tree of Life Church make declarations every service – that’s part of our culture and DNA.  So next year, expect Heal the Nations declarations every single service!

2. Enjoy yourself.  It’s a hectic pace and things will go wrong and things will surprise you.  Just keep smiling – keep at peace.  Remember the big picture!

1. Remember WHY you are doing it.  It’s to equip the saints to do the works of ministry.  Invite people who will do that.  Will Graham said something important – good works require longevity.  I got into a bit of a mess trying to get all different speakers for all sorts of reasons, then I just pulled back and simply invited the speakers that over the many years have consistently impacted my life for the better.  They all came, and they all helped and equipped people.

 

It’s not a problem for a ministry or church to pay people less than market rates who want to work for them. It’s not a sin. As long as three conditions are in place:

1. The person realizes that is the case before he enters the situation. You must be upfront with people. You cannot be dishonest.

2. You value the person appropriately and realize that they are making a sacrifice to help serve your dream. You don’t ignore that or take it lightly or for granted. This will show in the way you talk to people, in the way you deal with people’s requests for family time, holiday time, etc. It will show and people will know.

Although good churches should be built on the grace of God, the moment you step into church leadership there are expectations of character.  Otherwise the church will implode.  For the next few weeks, we will examine the qualifications for eldership as outlined by the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 3.

Now remember – only Jesus Christ appoints pastors, but pastors (like Timothy) appoint elders. We can see this from 1 Timothy 3.1: The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. (ESV).  You see you can aspire to the office of overseer and elder.  You can desire it and want to do it, and if so you desire something good!  

Being an elder means being an overseer – you have to look after people.  In Tree of Life, our elders run house groups – once a week they gather people in their houses and love them, study the Word with them, care about them and show grace to them and pray with them.  That is looking after people!  We call these groups Living Churches as they are part of the church and these meetings are church as much as our celebration services over the weekend.  It’s not glamorous, but it is a noble task!  It makes disciples, it helps people, it changes lives.

But to do this task of making disciples you need not just gifting but character.  Here Paul explains to Timothy what to look for:

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, (1 Tim. 3.2)

Overseer (bishop in the KJV) and elder are synonyms.  They mean the same thing: you cannot be an elder if you are not overseeing people.  

An elder must be above reproach.  This is Paul’s starting point.  What does it mean?

In the Greek it literally means “cannot be grabbed hold of” – it means to be a Teflon man – nothing sticks.  Whoever you are, you will upset someone at some point and the minute you are in a position of leadership it’s even more likely to happen!  Someone will always complain and moan about a leader – it happened to Moses, it happened to Jesus, it happened to Paul and it will happen to every leader in the church. 

That’s why a leader has to be a Teflon man – firstly people don’t spread the complaint because they know there’s no foundation to it.  If someone lies about you, no-one believes it because they can see your heart.  

And secondly, you are someone who doesn’t let accusations stick to them: you don’t hold a grudge, get bitter or offended.  You know that if they persecuted the Master, they will persecute you and you just love them and bless them.

Any other result and you are not going to be a good elder or leader.

Next week, we will keep doing down this line and look at the rest of these qualification.

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Enjoy!