Ministries are Creating the Best Product for Ministry Shoppers. Wrong Vision

After being in ministry for over 10 years now, I can honestly say that ministry can eerily mimic business strategies that compete with one another. In my earlier ministry years as a youth pastor, I can remember comparing my speaking abilities to other speakers and feeling miserably defeated. While in college, I measured the quality of worship experiences among collegiate gatherings in Oxford, Ms.

Should certain standards of excellence measure up? What should programming measure up to? Who sets the standard of excellence? Or maybe the better question is, who should set the standard? Hillsong Church, church camp, Northpoint Community Church, 12 Stone, Fellowship Church, or Breakaway Ministries? You fill in the blank according to what ministry fits your standard of excellence. But is this the biblical mentality? Surly excellence and creativity are biblical.

From videos, skits, music, sound, preaching, and even lighting, worship gatherings are obviously compared. My hunch is that "qualitative" comparisons may dangerously encourage ministry shopping; this is fundamentally dangerous. As all ministers know, ministry shoppers never really find contentment, but always have an appetite to fill a felt need and oftentimes become ministry leaches. In other words, these people treat ministries like a fast food restaurant soon to drive by another ministry and never experience the community of "dining" in and leveraging their own gifts to serve. Those who are ministry leaches often drain the ministry's passion which will soon change the trajectory of its vision; namely, the Great Commission becomes antiquated and substituted with a management of programming.

The most effective way to reach people is to feverishly pursue the unchurched who have no real standard of church or ministry to compare to; alongside with believers who are bought into the vision of ministry to serve, lead, and help according to their giftedness. People need a quality relational experience more than a quality programming experience. Put differently, if the experiential element doesn’t facilitate relationships, it may be the wrong median to use experientially.

Therefore, there should be no competition with ministries because the programming should NOT be the attractive element, but rather, Biblical community. If Biblical community were ministry's goals, then ministry's would be compatible not competitive.

I'm NOT convinced our goal should be to create a "better" experiential "product" than our Christian ministry next door, but rather, create an experiential product that fosters relationships while exalting the gospel.

in Summary, are we attracting people merely to what we are doing or are we attracting people to the gospel itself?

Facebook: Be Cautious about Possible Negatives

How would you feel if there was no more Facebook tomorrow? No new notifications, group invitations, photo tags, or friend requests? Some of you would be happy but many of you would have to find another hobby with all of your spare time.

Facebook has inarguably altered the facade of the social landscape. While Facebook has quite a number of communicative advantages, I want to discuss a few of its disadvantages.

The most important disadvantage is the reduction in person to person interaction. Facebook could potentially shape a generation’s social skills. Simple interpersonal relationship skills may become a lost art due to this still new phenomenon. We are social creatures created for “real” social interaction.

We have already seen all of the news reports discussing Facebook privacy issues. Facebook is just as private as the front page newspaper; except it's immediate. One newscaster reported, Facebook knows more about you than your credit card company. After looking at the way they advertise towards me, I would have to agree. We are utterly exposed to the world through Facebook.

I have known some students to delete Facebook because of plummeting grades due to its addictive nature and its conflicts with other people. If you check your Status Updates regularly, you are well aware that immature people share inappropriate and embarrassing quotes and pictures.

Spending an unhealthy time on Facebook may also come at the cost of the people that matter most in your life.

Politics: Unity For The Sake of The Gospel

1 Corinthians 1:10
“I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.”

Call me idealistic or ecumenical, but I truly believe in a biblical appeal for unity in the gospel is something worthy to be sought after. Unfortunately, the so-called “Christian” United States of America looks anything but unified in many different arenas of life. The most apparent is the arena of politics. Politics stirs up emotions that cause division at the expense of and conviction to many Christian beliefs.

Of course I have many political convictions... Why do I not have political bumper stickers and support candidates?...namely, because my reputation will be attached to those candidates who will inevitably be fallible in some form or another. So, I’m gonna continue to campaign for the infallible. For the sake of the Gospel, Why do I want to jeopardize my credibility?

Christians should guard themselves against radical partisan alignment because any form of radicalism comes at the expense of the gospel. Put differently, we must recognize biblical truth even if the truth comes from a fallible source, or a member of the “other” party. Truth is truth regardless of the source it comes from.

If I quote George W. Bush and someone assumes I align with Bush and gets angry because of this quote, it becomes a form of unbiblical favoritism. The same is true if I use an Obama quote... of which I will use below...not because I do or do not support him, but because his quote works perfectly for this blog post.

President Obama delivered a gripping speech in Arizona this week discussing the politically motivated shootings. The President’s words were non-partisan, pastoral, and appropriately unifying. His words should convict the heart of every political activist.

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds. But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let's use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
-President Obama


There are Christian members of the so-called left/right seem to spend much more time interpreting the gospel through their political worldview than they do preaching the gospel itself. Is Jesus a conservative Republican who wears a Sean Hannity T-shirt? Or is Jesus a social liberal who promotes equality even at the expense of Biblical doctrine?

There’s no gospel to a gospel that attaches itself to a political agenda. It’s heart-wrenching to see people leveraging the gospel to promote partisan politics.

Why do we spend so much time polarizing America arguing about politics? The decisions our government makes will soon be in the history books which will gather dust and fade away. However, Jesus will outlast every political figure and this is the fundamental reason I don’t make much of partisan politics.

So before you make a political statement on Twitter, Facebook, around the dinner table, or in class, make sure it’s in the pursuit of biblical humility, unity, and sound doctrine.

Don’t sell out Christ for an elephant or a donkey!

William Wilber-force committed to pray for social change. If you are arguing for social change more than you are praying for it, you are at the very least being unbiblical...

Gauging Success In College Ministry (Deep & Wide)

The real temptation in leading a college ministry is to imitate some of the larger collegiate ministries in the country in pursuit of success. The simple reality is that numbers don’t measure biblical discipleship. Consequently, holistic discipleship should be our goal, not numbers. In fact, larger ministries often attract smaller church congregants who focus more on depth; sometimes causing smaller churches to closed their doors. However, larger ministries don’t necessarily mean shallow. Put differently, deep & wide ministries aren’t mutually exclusive.

Why is the temptation “bigger is better”?

There are a variety of factor’s in this mentality, but the simple answer is “larger ministries are spotlighted the most in media” Louie Giglio may be the most famous college minister in the country. He is known for drawing tens of thousand collegians from all over the country. While Choice Ministries (the ministry he started at Baylor University) is doing impactful ministry for kingdom building, it has led to copycat ministries all over the country. What Louie is doing at Passion and large conferences is not intended to translate to every college campus; He has been known to say this. In other words, a cool band and a top notch communicator does not equal a healthy college ministry. A healthy college ministry should be built around mentoring, bible study groups, leadership training, and mission trips.

If you focus on the depth of ministry, God will take care of the width.

Tired of "God is Dying Statistics"

You’ve read the books, blogs, magazines, and statistics. You’ve heard the messages, professors, talk show hosts, and conference speakers. From TV to radio and newspapers to the pulpit, the irritating message has remained the same; God is dying and people are losing their faith. You’ve heard this statement in some form or fashion if you’ve been around anywhere lately. To be brutally honest, and while most statistics are inarguably accurate, I am fatigued at all of the rage. In fact, at our ministry at Arkansas State, we could argue quite the contrary. We have seen more students involved in holistic discipleship than we have ever seen before; there are countless ministries that would echo the same type of experience. The answer to this “god crisis” is not yelling statistics in face of America, but to simply to be an instrument of 1 Corinthians 2:1-5;

"And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."


God is still in control...even when it doesn't look like it circumstantially.

If God is in control, then He won’t be dying...

The Redemptive Value of Emotions

The hospital is an emotional environment of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I’ve been sitting in the ICU over 30 hours now and have experienced and witnessed an immense amount of emotion. It doesn’t take long to observe in an ICU room that God has wired humanity for emotion. While I am writing, a women is audibly crying out to Jesus. How ironic that when God can be accused of being the most absent, He is felt the most present. Where/who else does our hope lie? Mourning is mentioned 138 times in scripture and joy is mentioned 242 times. Emotions themselves are neither good or bad, but rather, how we deal with the emotions can be defining in our lives. Psalm 34:18 declares that God is close to the brokenhearted. The Psalms frequently express the emotions of David from anger to pleasure. Radical Emotions will be inevitable; The bigger question is who/where will you direct your emotion? Emotions are often Redemptive.

#tweetthebible2011: Leveraging Social Networking For Eternal Impact

We can’t escape social networking, but is that all bad?

One of the top reasons people use social networking such as Twitter and Facebook includes stalking, gossiping, and falling into the peer pressure of all the hype. 87 million visitors spend an average of 4 hours and 39 minutes every month on Facebook. But is Facebook and Twitter the ultimate time waster? It doesn’t have to be. The simple reality is that people utilize these networks and post according to what matters most in their lives. What if we leveraged these social networks for making an eternal impact in 2011?

You Version is an application on my iphone that has a great reading strategy for scripture. There are other networks that help too!

What if we read through scripture each day in 2011 and posted a 140 character principle (timeless truth) on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #tweetthebible2011 ? For instance, my Genesis 1 principle is “All Creation is the result of the Goodness of God”. There are endless principles in scripture and those principles are life altering. Maybe #tweetthebible2011 will even be a trending topic.

So start reading scripture in 2011 and tell the World what principle God is teaching you using the hashtag #tweetthebible2011.