Stewarding Our Time

By Wil Moore: I was recently having coffee with a dad who has 3 incredible kids. One is in college pursuing a communications degree, one is about to graduate, and the other is a junior. Two of the three are incredibly gifted athletes. One will soon play Division 1 baseball and the other Division 1 basketball. 

After listening to him talk through their daily and weekly routine I was exhausted for him.

Their days are filled with early mornings rushing to practices, after-school private lessons, and multiple games a week. To say they are busy is an understatement. 

This reality is common amongst most families with teenagers. Whether it is because of sports, academics, drama, or music, parents are busier than ever. So, where does family devotion time fit into the busy schedule? How do we make time when time is the thing we seem to have the least of? 

My response is not mind-blowing or deeply rooted in hours of theological reasoning. My response is simple: You make time for what is important. 

My older brother and I had the privilege of playing baseball at the college level. Both parents followed me around until I was 22 years old. Go ahead and say it, “bless their heart”. 

Needless to say my parents fully understood busy schedules. However, my parents also understood taking time for what is most important. It did not matter if we were on the road to Tyler, Texas or West Florida, my parents would always make time to talk about what God was doing in our lives. 

The key here is “make time.” Think about it, we make time for everything else in our lives: Monday Night Football, The Amazing Race, social media updates, dinner, coffee, etc. So why not make time for family to discuss what God is up to? Our knee-jerk reaction is to say we are too busy, but I want to encourage you to remove that word from your vocabulary and think about the benefits of making time for family devotion. 

You have the unique opportunity to instill in your kids the importance of making time for Jesus. As a 35-year-old husband and father I often think back to the time my parents made for us to discuss the Bible and our relationship with Jesus. I am now replicating what my parents modeled for me as a child. The greatest thing you can model for your kids is how to make time for Jesus. 

I want to provide for you a few tips that may help as you navigate busy schedules and family devotion:

1. Look Ahead

Every Sunday look at your calendar and see when the best time would be that week to have a family devotion. Oh, and it may be on the road to a ball game or in a hotel room in between games. We did that a few times.

2. Have a Plan

Memorize a verse together, read one chapter a week as a family, write down prayer requests, have a different person lead each week. If you plan it, you will more than likely do it.

3. Be Consistent

Regardless of your schedule, make sure it happens each week. The best way to do this is to designate a specific day and time each week as your family devo time. My wife and I recently sat down and said Thursday is our family time. We had to do this or we would move it and not do it.

4. Take the Pressure Off

 Chances are you do not have a theology degree. That is okay. Take the pressure off of yourself to have all the answers. The greatest thing my dad would say is, “Son, I don’t know about that but let me find out.” The goal isn’t to have it all figured out. The goal is to make it important. You can figure out together how there was a talking donkey in Numbers 22. Good luck with that one!  

Remember, you can do this! You make time for what is important…so make time for Jesus. Your grandkids will thank you one day. 

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By Wil Moore. Used with permission.

The post Are You Too Busy for a Family Devotion? appeared first on Discipleship.org.

Source: Are You Too Busy for a Family Devotion?

The post Are You Too Busy for a Family Devotion? appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by unSeminary: Welcome to this week’s unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have David Putnam with us today. David spent many years as a church planter and executive pastor and today consults with churches as a lead navigator with Auxano. David has also founded the organization Planting the Gospel which helps transition churches from a weekend-only disciple-making culture.

David is with us to share simple tools that will help your church make disciple-making organic and accessible to everyone.

What kind of disciples are we making? // We are all making disciples, but what kind? Much of the time, without realizing it, churches make organizational disciples rather than gospel-centered disciples who in turn make more disciples. Covid has revealed to us that when our programming changes, our organizational disciples can vanish. How can we equip people so that even when there are unforeseen changes in the church, our disciples are still fully plugged into Christ and able to follow Him, doing the work of the great commission?What is a disciple? // We’ve allowed religion to take over the gospel and make it more complex than it needs to be. We need to take it back to a place of simplicity as found in scripture. There are three fundamental questions that David suggests we take a look at: What is the gospel? What is a disciple? And what is the church? David defines a disciple as a follower of Jesus who’s learning to live out the realities and implications of the gospel by living like Jesus, loving like Jesus, leaving what Jesus left behind. What did Jesus leave behind? Disciples!Living on mission. // Churches that are focused on making disciples have practical tools in place for their people. This includes life on life, life in community, life on mission. Many churches might have life on life and life in community built into their rhythms, but they neglect the life on mission aspect. How can we maximize our impact by releasing people instead of simply gathering people? We need to be equipping our people to enter the “mission field” right where they are, teaching them to be missionaries where they live, work and play.Disciple-making is evangelism. // David identifies five types of disciples: pre-disciples, new disciples, growing disciples, multiplying disciples, and catalytic disciples. An unbeliever is a pre-disciple. We need to equip people in our churches to engage pre-disciples in disciple-making by providing tools so that they can tell their story, and tell God’s story.The Gospel Disciple Life. // David has created a free resource called The Gospel Disciple Life: A Quick Start Guide for a Micro-Group Strategy for Making Disciples that Makes Disciples that will help you introduce disciple-making to your church. Consisting of simple Bible reading and meeting in micro-groups, this practical tool uses an organic method which is accessible to everyone. Who is the next person you will invite into a disciple relationship?

You can get help with disciple-making at your church by visiting www.plantingthegospel.com.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing

Great things happen when the right leadership is in place in a local church… lives are changed and churches thrive.

With all the craziness that has gone on in 2020, we know that many churches are beginning to ask hard questions about what their current team looks like and how ready they are to lead into our new reality. Download Chemistry Staffing’s Restructuring Playbook to develop clarity around where you need to be focusing your time, resources, and team.

Source: A Simple & Scalable Way to Reproduce Christians with David Putnam

The post A Simple & Scalable Way to Reproduce Christians with David Putnam appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Bill Hull: What was Jesus asking from his followers? When he said, “Follow me,” what did he expect them to do? Once again, the answer is more straightforward than we might imagine. He asked them to leave their tax booth, drop their nets, and leave their home behind, and he implied that he would handle the rest. Jesus didn’t ask for a creedal recital or a formal confession. He asked for a demonstration of just enough faith to begin walking with him.[1] The story of Peter and Andrew provides an illustration. “One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, ‘Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!’ And they left their nets at once and followed him” (Matt. 4:18–20 NLT).

Bill Hull is one of the speakers at this year’s National Disciple Making Forum. Learn more and register here.

Mark’s account fills in the rest of the story. “A little farther up the shore Jesus saw Zebedee’s sons, James and John, in a boat repairing their nets. He called them at once, and they followed him, leaving their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men” (Mark 1:19–20 NLT). James and John may have already warned their father that this might happen, since they had probably already met Jesus. So Zebedee was left holding the nets, but he probably wasn’t surprised. He knew the affect Jesus had on his sons. Yet regardless of what he thought, they left to follow Jesus.

Did leaving behind profession and family qualify as “saving faith?” The truth is that we don’t have a nice, neat compartment into which we can place these men. We can’t say they were Christians because no church or organization existed at this point. All we can say for sure is that they were followers of Jesus and had much to learn from him at this point.

NOTES:

[1] The Come and See period was about four months and is recorded in John 1:35–4:46. While this episode with Levi is recorded early in Matthew, it is placed after the Come and See period when calendared out in a Harmony of the Gospels, and begins the Come and Follow Me period as recorded in Matthew, which is about ten months long. For further explanation, see Bill Hull, Jesus Christ, Disciplemaker (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004). Robert Thomas and Stanley Gundry, The NIV Harmony of the Gospels (New York: HarperCollins, 1988) is a good resource for seeing the stages of Jesus’ four calls to his followers: Come and See, Come and Follow Me, Come Be with Me, and Remain in Me. This four-fold call is derived not only from Scripture but was also noted by A.B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1988), 11.

Follow Bill Hull on Twitter here and Facebook here.

This excerpt has been adapted from Conversion and Discipleship and originally posted on The Bonhoeffer Project blog.

Image credit: Shutterstock.

Source: Jesus Asks for More

The post Jesus Asks for More appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Brandon A. Cox: We’re so “ether-or” in our viewpoints, aren’t we? We have a tendency to form an opinion, stake a position, and defend it against anything that looks different.

Tension can be good. Out of tension flows a creative discussion and differences of opinion that force us to re-evaluate our viewpoints and emphases to ensure that we’re thinking biblically and effectively.

For example, right now, the tension in church planting discussion surrounds models.

Should we launch large and fast?

Should we take our time and build a strong core group?

Should we start having church to make disciples?

Should we make disciples and allow a church to form out of the discipleship?

Should we be attractional? Missional? Uni-laterally bi-directionally intentional?

And so we have megachurches, house churches, traditional churches, organic churches, plus a lot of dead and dying churches (unfortunately).

As we’ve planted Grace Hills Church, we keep using three words to reflect our model and approach to making disciples.

We Will Be Attractional

The “Come and See” of the Gospel

The attractional approach gets a bad wrap for a couple of reasons.

First, some churches know how to attract people to a production, but have no depth past Sunday morning. Second, we sometimes think the sound, the lights, and the technology are the attractive part.

We need to be attractional by living distinctively redeemed lives, keeping our integrity and trust with the surrounding world, leading people in genuine God-directed worship, serving in tangible and visible ways, and teaching a life-changing, absolute truth from the Word that acts like a sword, piercing to the depths of the human heart.

The shiny objects may get you attention, but what really attracts people is genuine community, authentic and relevant teaching, heartfelt worship, and genuine love between people.

We Will Be Transformational

The “Come and Die” of the Gospel

Jesus invited four fisherman to follow him one day.

By the end of the gospels, they are ready to die for Him.

In fact, three of them do indeed become martyrs for the faith and John suffered nearly to the point of death for the gospel.

That is transformation. That is life-change.

And that needs to be celebrated from the very birth of a new church.

We Will Be Missional

The “Go and Tell” of the Gospel

God’s intention was never for us to isolate ourselves from the world or to imitate our surrounding culture.

Rather He wants us to infiltrate the culture around us and demonstrate His love to the least, the lost, and the last of humanity so that the nations of the world can be brought into the enjoyment of the glory of God.

If attraction is all about gathering a church, then mission is more about scattering the church into the community, and into every possible mission field on the planet.

Perhaps we should stop arguing over which model is the best or most biblical and see in both the ancient and the modern church the power and effectiveness of being attractive to the culture, transformational for individuals, and missional for believers.

Balance might just be the key.

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Source: 3 Components of a Healthy Church Planting Model

The post 3 Components of a Healthy Church Planting Model appeared first on Passion for Planting.