Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

15 Mar

Is ‘change’ a bad word in your church?

Posted by Ken in church outreach, evangelism, Evangelism Coaching, evangelistic, EvangeNews, EvangeVideo, Family, God answers prayer, missional living, outreach, Prayer, soul winning, witnessing.

Leith Anderson, senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, in his book Dying For Change writes, “Change is an unavoidable part of life.  Each church member is changing while the church is changing while the society is changing.  Change is not the choice.  How we handle it is.”

For better or for worse, American people and society are changing.  Our community is changing.  Yes, we can value the past, and we must cherish our heritage; but we cannot hope that tomorrow will be yesterday.

As our society and people’s view of life changes, we as the church must adapt and change our methods also.  Our God does not change.  His truth does not change.  Humankind’s need for the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not change; but our methods for getting that Gospel to them may need to change.

Change for the sake of change is not good, but change for the sake of accomplishing our purpose is essential.  What is our purpose?  What is our mission?  If the purpose or mission of Jesus Christ while on earth was “to seek and to save those who are lost,” then how can the purpose of the church be any different?  The primary purpose of the church must be to constantly point all people of all ages to Jesus through the ministry of the Word and obedient service.

How is the church going to better fulfill that purpose 2012?  That’s up to YOU, the people that make up the body of believers who gather as committed families in various churches everywhere.  I feel that the first step must be change in our own hearts.  As we grow to understand who God is and His love for us more, we will love Him more.  As we obey His commands and allow the Holy Spirit to transform our lives, we will be more like Jesus in our character and actions.  As we allow ourselves to be broken before God, and grace-giving followers of Jesus, we will see others as Christ sees them.  We will then reach out in ministry to others and be the witness He has called us to be to everyone within our circle of influence as well as anywhere He leads us.

Let’s not shun or fear change.  We MUST continue to change in order to fulfill the mission Jesus has given.  May we embrace the attitude of “whatever it takes” to reach everyone within our changing culture with the only hope – the unchanging gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ!

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15 Jan

A call to become a “Missionalist!”

Posted by Ken in church outreach, evangelism, Evangelism Coaching, evangelistic, EvangeNews, EvangeVideo, Family, God answers prayer, missional living, outreach, Prayer, soul winning, Uncategorized, witnessing.

A call for Christians (committed followers of Jesus Christ) to become . . . “MISSIONALISTS” . . .
The Wikipedia world wide web Dictionary defines “Missional living”:  a Christian term that describes a missionary lifestyle; adopting the posture, thinking, behaviors, and practices of a missionary in order to engage others with the gospel message. The use of the term missional has gained popularity at the end of the 20th Century due to Tim Keller,[1] Ed Stetzer, Alan Hirsch, the Gospel and Our Culture Network, Allelon, as well as others to contrast the concept of a select group of “professional” missionaries with the understanding that all Christians should be involved in the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.

Maybe we should simply call it “Christian living” or “Biblical Living”, because that’s what it is!  The cause of Christ in our land is diminishing because “Christians” have lost focus on what’s most important:

John 3:16 (Amplified Bible)   For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.

John 3:16 (The Message)  This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

Christianity needs missionalists – and lots of them!!!

We need an army of believers who view their mission in life through the lens of Christ’s redemptive mission.

To have a missionalist school of thinking within Christianity, we need more students, professors, bloggers, strategists, professionals, workers, leaders, and moms, dads, cousins, sisters and brothers to be trained as missionalists.

We need a new generation of Christians who will think and act as missionalists rather than Christian consumers!

The Church of Jesus Christ needs Christians who will adopt missionary thinking and behaviors to strategically engage those in their sphere of influence (workplace, neighborhood, community, school, hobby/friendship group, extended family, etc) with the gospel!

I’m calling Christians around the globe to become missionalists
(Missional Living, Biblical Living people, Biblical World View)  —
to seize the redemptive mission of Jesus as their own
and to adopt missional thinking and behaviors!

A missionalist is sent by Jesus to “be Jesus” to everyone everywhere.