Reaching the Unreached Archives - Passion for Planting

SABOTAGE

Sean Cronin — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 09:00:40 +0000

by Peyton Jones: In France, the efforts of the French Resistance were significant enough to make a significant impact on the outcome of the war. They dismantled tank treads, put sand in the grease of vehicles, and stole ball bearings.

Sabotage.

It’s the enemy’s oldest and favorite tactic. He sabotaged Eden. He infiltrated the children of Israel by seduction when Balaak’s army couldn’t defeat them in a head on confrontation. In the early days, his tactic is to sow tares among the wheat making it clear that “An enemy has done this.” He is trying to derail the carriage of the troop transport off course. In WW2, my grandfather who served in the 101st airborne was delayed from crossing the Atlantic, but the ship he was originally scheduled to be on was sunk by a German U-boat.

In the early days, you’ve got to chart a course, set your face like flint. Like Jesus heading towards the cross, set your face steadfastly towards Jerusalem…and lock your sights on Calvary.

ILL FITTING ARMOR

Launching with the right focus is essential if your plant is going to avoid defaulting just another big church after you’ve grown. If you’re using the New Testament apostolic model, then the solution is hard-wired into your church already. You’re not wired to grow big, but to reproduce. As soon as the tender shoots begin to grow, you’ll be splicing them to ready them for transplants. Outgrowing your building means that you’ve got to start assembling some new teams for planting outwards. Multiple services, outlying campuses, and other forms of ecclesiastical greed will make you want to vomit instead of causing you to salivate as you indulge your insatiable appetite for more. Getting your priorities right from the start involves setting a missional agenda that seeks to grow the church outward, rather than just upwards. It also details how to ensure that you’re starting by reaching the lost, rather than just attracting disillusioned Christians from other churches.

But starting out well isn’t a guarantee that all will end well. It is possible to start out a champion like Gideon earning the moniker of “Baal-slayer”, only to end up establishing your own form of idolatry in its place as people bow down to your sacred ephod. If people worshipped Gideon’s armor, rest assured that they will find ways to worship your success too… If you let them. The masses will flock to you and burst the fire capacity of your four walls, but at that juncture, you have a choice. If I had my way, most of you reading this would constantly be shedding the ephod like David, finding Saul’s megachurch armor too big and cumbersome. Instead, you’d be opting for a sling-shot, the Spirit’s power, and enough confidence in the Almighty to keep running at giants.

Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.

Source: SABOTAGE

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ACTS 1 & 2

Sean Cronin — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 09:00:50 +0000

by Peyton Jones: Acts was not written to show us how to do church. It was written to show us how to do churches. Acts was written to show us how the church expands; how the West was won. From day one at Pentecost, Peter as a wise leader knew that the vision of what was going to happen would be shared. God was going to speak to, inspire, and move through everybody. Part of the miracle of tongues on the day of Pentecost was to the ears of the hearers. Peter tells them that the activity of the Holy Spirit would cause old men to dream dreams, and young men see visions. Both of these groups of people aren’t taken all that seriously, but the bottom line was this; inclusion.

Church plants are the place to dream.

The reason that Acts 1 & 2 are so important is that most people want to be an Acts 2:42 church. But if read properly, the reader understands that in order to be an Acts 2 church, you must first be an Acts 1 church. Getting on your knees, and seeking Him for His presence is the chief business of your core team. As they do that, the Holy Spirit will begin to speak to each of them, burdening each of them for the work. When that starts to happen, a leader knows that God is in the house, and he’s merely a servant, serving as a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord. Just keep holding that door open church planter so that the presence of the Holy Spirit can come in and lift up Christ in your midst! That’s what happened on Pentecost!

Source: ACTS 1 & 2

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START WITH THE LOST

Sean Cronin — Sat, 04 May 2019 09:00:53 +0000

by Peyton Jones: Paul always started with outreach. You can’t just start with Christians, and expect the lost to magically turn up. To turn magical thinking into a reality, somewhere between stage 2 and 3 is a secret locomotive platform that you’ve got to locate if you’re going to get where you want. Somewhere you will need to start reaching out to the lost together as a team. You’ve got to begin community outreach before your public launch because at the end of the day, you’re not looking to simply start a new church for Christians to go to. There should be other things that you’re doing in order to get out into the community as a group. We’ll talk more about that later, but for now, simply understand that outreach along the way is an essential part of developing the bond within your team. It’s part of your bonding experience!!!

YOUR PUBLIC LAUNCH:

There is nothing as exhilarating as the backside of your public launch. Most of us wanna climb back up thousands of feet and jump all over again before we’ve even repacked our parachute… A few words about planning your public launch.

Planning is essential.

This date needs to be set in stone before you even put the others on the calendar. The reason why is that you’re going to be tempted to keep moving it back because you’re a chicken.

You know it, and I know it.

So draw a line in the sand from the start. Like it or not, you’re jumping out of that plane Mr. T, even if we have to drug you or knock you out. You need to start from this date and work backward; determining how long your team needs to bond before you start inviting the lost to your church. Whether you plan to launch out of a coffee shop, community center, night club, or still meet in your house, it’s party time in heaven, coz souls are about to get saved from this date forward.

Source: START WITH THE LOST

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STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

Sean Cronin — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 09:00:16 +0000

To catch the blog post about Missional VS. Attractional CLICK HERE!

by Peyton Jones: Each church planter is seemingly faced with a choice as to what path they will take, deeming one path as the way of the Jedi, and the other as the dark path that must never be ventured down, lest it forever dominate their destiny. However, those that watched the prequels know that only Sith deal in absolutes. The difficulty with glorifying one model at the expense of demonizing the other is that the Spirit may be working through both.

From the 1st Century onwards, Church history is packed with examples both missional and attractional. Those that have gone before us seemingly utilized both approaches as they followed their call to proclaim the gospel and expand the borders of the Kingdom of God.

Charles Spurgeon, a favorite among many missional community leaders was so attractional that he had to ask his congregation to limit their attendance to the Metropolitan tabernacle to 3 out of 4 Sundays so that the massive crowds in London could be accommodated. There was even a special ferry crossing the Thames on Sundays whose conductor would yell, “Over the water to hear Charlie!”.

If that’s not attractional, nothing is.

Whitefield and Wesley used a combined approach of the missional and attractional models. In the fields, they attracted crowds of thousands, broadening the Methodist movement. Wesley recognized the need to gather the converts into house groups where discipleship would be fostered and the “Experience Meeting” was born. These groups, known as “Societies” became future church plants after Wesley and Whitefield rode away on their horses and into the sunset.

Even Paul the apostle strategically used the attractional model when he visited the synagogues. He repeatedly spoke in the synagogues, knowing that it’d create a riot, bringing crowds that he could preach to. In Jerusalem, they rode the middle line between the two extremes by meeting publicly in the temple courts, and from house to house in smaller groups. What about Jesus? Crowds of plus 5000 followed him, and at Passover he did many miracles in Jerusalem so that his fame spread. Nonetheless, these things didn’t thrill him, and the gospels testify to his favoring the smaller, more intimate settings.

In fact, the first thing that the Holy Spirit did when He fell at Pentecost was attractional in nature. He stirred up tongues of fire over the heads of the apostles, gave them supernatural abilities to be walking talking Rosetta stones, and filled them with so much joy, they appeared drunk.

And this drew a crowd…

And a massive crowd was just what the Doctor ordered. Peter rocked the mic with the gospel and 3000 were saved that day like a primitive Billy Graham crusade. Although it’d be unpopular today to state that you kicked off at the tee line with a massive outreach, or crusade, that’s how it happened back in the 1st Century.

The attractional stroke of the Spirit falling at Pentecost was the master plan of Jesus getting down to business in Jerusalem. From that day on, the church went missional as evidenced by Acts 2:42, but here’s the kicker; they didn’t cease being attractional. Acts 2:46 encapsulates the bilateral attractional and missional movement of the early church “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes”. They continued to meet in the public spaces of the temple in massive crowds on a daily basis, and broke up to “do life together” in homes. You could say that the miracles that Peter did were attractional in that they drew massive crowds to the frustration of the Sanhedrin.

If balance to the force was good enough for Jesus, Paul, Whitefield, and Spurgeon, then the question is “Why choose?”.

Should the attractional and missional models be locked in a head to head battle to the finish like two immortals from the Highlander series. Who said “There can be only one” anyways?

Like a political battle, people are often mistakenly forced to choose between two bad options without realizing that there may be a third, and better alternative. When forced into a false antithesis, we often sacrifice the best properties of the model we don’t like, and close our eyes to the weaknesses of the one we favor.

I can imagine that once upon a time there were two types of people. There were those who ate jam sandwiches, and those who dug on peanut butter sandwiches. Then, somebody had a disgusting idea. Somebody came along who wanted it all; somebody who’d had enough of being forced to choose between the two false choices. Some genius solved the dilemma by combining two differently slathered pieces of bread and created a masterpiece.

In 2008 I had the opportunity of listening to Steve Timmis, Director of Acts29 Western Europe, Founding planter of Crowded House, Architect of Porterbrook Network Training materials, and Author of Total Church. He was speaking to a small gathering of planters from the Acts29 and New Breed networks. What he said stunned us all. After nearly 30 years pioneering the missional community movement in Sheffield, Steve confessed that Crowded House had missed. At that time Crowded House was a network of house churches spread throughout Sheffield at roughly 1000 people strong. They would start new missional communities whenever the last one started reached 20 people, and the resulting growth was exponential. Timmis confessed the realization that there were still swaths of people who’d never be reached simply because they’d never feel comfortable entering a stranger’s home. As a missionary to his own culture, Steve had recognized a cultural barrier to the gospel and sought to leap the hurdle.

How?

You guessed it…

They started meeting in a larger gathering once a month. It was evangelistic in nature and intended to serve as a catchment for those untouched by the missional community model. For many the church had a great living room, but no front door. These larger gatherings served as the front porch to the church allowing many more to cross the threshold and step into the living room of the church. Like Paul, Timmis became all things to all men, in order to win some.

Whatever model the Spirit leads you in, it’s important to remain humble, and open to what God might be doing elsewhere.

Source: STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

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YOU CAN’T TAKE YOUR PETS TO WAR

Sean Cronin — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 09:00:49 +0000

“Where there’s light, there’s bugs”. After church planting I realize the importance of a good bug zapper. Everybody’s got an angle. Everybody’s got an agenda. People see a new church plant on the horizon and they think that it’ll provide an ideal place to make the sunshine on their favorite pets. Even among our own core team, there was a temptation to pull the church one way or the other into our personal preferences. But because what we all wanted was for people to see Jesus, we sacrificed our personal pets. If scrambling up over the trenches and barbed wire, and running covert missions into enemy territory, then we were marked for war. As planters for the kingdom, it was serious business, and our pictures were going to end up on the “Most Wanted” pin-up on the bulletin boards of hell. Therefore, we made a decision early on. We forbid people to bring their pets. I’ve never seen pets on the battlefield, have you? I mean, a pet terrapin on a leash would look pretty stupid while mortars shells are exploding all around me.

We all have our pets. Mine is preaching. In America, the circles that I was a part of preached for 65 minutes. Sometimes 75, but then people complained. A short sermon was 50. 35 minutes was unheard of. When I got to Wales, they all expected 30 minute sermons. I had to change a bit. Not that much, but I trimmed it down to about 40 minutes, and that was about the best I could do. My 65 minute pet had to be left home in America (sniff). But I wasn’t the only one. There were people from the more charismatic background who joined our team and were nothing but a blessing. Early on, we had a meeting in which we all listed what we’d like to see in the church, and talked it through. In that meeting we talked about what would fly and what wouldn’t in the establishment of Pillar. We all had to sacrifice some pets in that meeting.

As a leader, it’s important that you listen to the visions, ideas, and priorities of your team. It’ll save you some headaches in the future. Get it all out after a few months, after you’ve gotten to know and trust one another. I definitely wouldn’t do it before the six-month mark; you’ll prejudge each other too soon. Once you get to know each other, you’ll be able to listen respectfully to each other without alienating one another. So although one of your core team members has a great idea, you’ve heard him pitch it, and likewise, have given him ample scriptural justification for why naked Sundays is probably not going to fly. Setting the ground rules is something that you’ll need to do together as you talk through the reasons why things get the thumbs up or thumbs down.

Source: YOU CAN’T TAKE YOUR PETS TO WAR

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WHY THE WORLD NEEDS YOU TO HAVE A MISSION STATEMENT

Sean Cronin — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 09:00:48 +0000

by Peyton Jones: Launching with the right focus is essential if your plant is going to avoid defaulting into just another big church after you’ve grown. If you’re using the New Testament apostolic model, then the solution is hard-wired into your church already. You’re not wired to grow big, but to reproduce. As soon as the tender shoots begin to grow, you’ll be splicing them to ready them for transplants. Outgrowing your building means that you’ve got to start assembling some new teams for planting outwards.

Multiple services, outlying campuses, and other forms of ecclesiastical greed will make you want to vomit instead of causing you to salivate as you indulge your insatiable appetite for more. Getting your priorities right from the start involves setting a missional agenda that seeks to grow the church outward, rather than just upwards. It also details how to ensure that you’re starting by reaching the lost, rather than just attracting disillusioned Christians from other churches.

But starting out well isn’t a guarantee that all will end well. It is possible to start out a champion like Gideon earning the moniker of “Baal-slayer”, only to end up establishing your own form of idolatry in its place as people bow down to your sacred ephod. If people worshipped Gideon’s armor, rest assured that they will find ways to worship your success too… If you let them. The masses will flock to you and burst the fire capacity of your four walls, but at that juncture, you have a choice. If I had my way, most of you reading this would constantly be shedding the ephod like David, finding Saul’s megachurch armor too big and cumbersome. Instead, you’d be opting for a sling-shot, greater mobility, guerilla tactics, the Spirit’s power, and enough confidence in the Almighty to keep running at giants.

The world has had enough of churches that are out for themselves. Young people have already made up their minds that churches are no longer about people, but about the institution. They cynically analyze the million dollar money making machine from a distance and conclude that the church is out for itself. Their number one question is “Are you for me, against me, or for yourself?” In the end, a mission statement will help you safeguard that the church doesn’t become about “itself” as an institution, merely adding more programs to keep the machine running and the people happy. After all, if you don’t keep the people happy they’ll leave, right? Any church planter worth his salt always wants people to leave his church; either to plant more churches, or to stop distracting the rest of them from the mission. You know what the difference between a church plant of 50 people and an established church of 1000 people? The answer is 950 people. It’s up to you to make sure that your church has more to say when it gives that answer. There should be more difference between a church plant and an established church than numbers. It’s an issue of DNA, not size.

Source: WHY THE WORLD NEEDS YOU TO HAVE A MISSION STATEMENT

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AIMING FOR NOTHING

Sean Cronin — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 09:00:06 +0000

by Peyton Jones: So, you think you know what you want to do. Whereas Paul laid the foundation like a wise and Master builder, most church planters make a fundamental mistake at the foundational level. They’ve never defined what it is they’re going to do. They have more of an impression; a gut-feeling about what they’re supposed to do; an itch that can’t be scratched any other way. They want to church plant, but they’ve never been asked, who, why, when, or how. The truth is that they’ve probably not even asked themselves. When you’ve not been asked to formulate a vision into tangible,
repeatable, words that make sense, you can often take for granted the fact that other people will understand you.

The fact is, they won’t.

If you don’t understand what God is calling you to do, then nobody else will understand you either. True, you may be able to convince them to follow your leadership, but it’ll probably be from morbid curiosity rather than God-given vision. Before you can busy yourself gathering a core team, you need to be able to tell them what you’ll be doing.

Along these lines Paul said his ministry wasn’t like a boxer just beating at the air. He knew what he was swinging for. Inexperienced church planters suffer from a myopic vision that has failed to look beyond church launching the plant off the ground. As long as the bucket of bolts gets airborne they consider it a success if it doesn’t crash and burn. Filling a room with crowds of Christians is not a successful church plant. Numbers doth not successful a church plant make.

According to statistics, fourteen out of fifteen churches that significantly increase do so by transfer growth. The risk of modern church planting is that your plant may “grow” and appear to have been successful without reaching a single lost person. A mission statement will remind you that like the Blues Brothers, you’re getting the band together because you’re on a mission from God. The mission statement will bring laser focus in defining what your mission is.

Source: AIMING FOR NOTHING

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MEETING WITH THE MAYOR

Sean Cronin — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 09:00:21 +0000

by Peyton Jones: In the last Blog post we talked about COGs and catering your church plant to the community. But how do you find out what the community needs? I have a few suggestions.

MEETING WITH THE MAYOR

The easy way is to talk to the professionals. We met with the Mayor and asked her what the needs of the community were. Heck, pick up a newspaper. Have your team circle all of the needs in the city. Then, with a red marker have them circle the top two that they’d like to do something about. You’ve just pinpointed their passions. Once you’ve pinpointed somebody’s passions, their gifts are close behind them. There are far too many needs for you to reach, and you will have to select which ones you’re going to meet. Luckily for you, the Holy Spirit has already identified and targeted the needs for you, and equipped your team…if you’re listening.

PRAYER WALKS

Nehemiah did it before launching his rebuilding campaign in Jerusalem. Paul did it in Athens before preaching on Mars Hill. When overwhelmed with the task in front of him, the church planter puts on his combat boots and prays that God will give him every place that his foot falls as an inheritance for the Kingdom. It’s tantamount to dropping leaflets like America did in Vietnam saying, “there is about to be an attack here.” (my paraphrase). The reality is that you’re picking a fight with the enemy, and poking a spiritual finger in his chest. He laughs at all of our puny efforts, but he trembles when a team of believers hoofs the pavement with praise in their hearts, prayer on their lips, and a hunger in their eyes. (Use Benjamin’s blessing – wolf/blood)

HANG OUT

Start going there. Start meeting there. Start making that community part of the rhythm of your day. As you do, you will form relationships. You will visit the same coffee house or pub and start to recognize the regulars. As you converse with them, ask them two questions: 1. what do you love about living here? 2. Whats the biggest challenge about living here? You will begin to gather key data about the community.

INTERACTION

There is a lot of talk about being relevant. Like Iyego Montoya, I suspect that many people use that word a lot not knowing it doesn’t mean what they think it means. The word relevant comes from the word relate. Can we relate to people? When you read the gospels, you quickly realize that Jesus knew how to relate to people, and even more of a compliment to his witness, they could relate to him.

If we’re going to relate to people that means that we’re going to have to learn to talk to people. We often space ourselves out from people like they’re lepers. John’s gospel is the most evangelistic book of the New Testament. Have you ever noticed that it’s a collection of discussions between Jesus and people? The entire thing. What does that tell us about evangelism?

Sometimes I think that the church has always believed in drone strikes. For most of the history of military campaigns, armies have had to set foot onto enemy territory to take it. Nonetheless, the church sets up a base of operations and never leaves it. They hope that the enemy will simply walk in and surrender to it like it was a walk-in-enter. The drones aren’t coming.

When John Wesley and Whitefield rode the wave of the Holy Spirit during the Great Awakening, they established small groups throughout the country called “societies”. They were convinced that life change happened in circles, not in rows. They found conversions in the field, and discipleship in the living room. There were churches. Lots of them. But the churches weren’t reaching people, so Wesley and Whitefield went outside.

This took huge faith, and gumption. They had to exegete their culture. Whitefield went to the coal fields, because the miners worked seven days a week and couldn’t hear the gospel at church. The methodist preachers were soon down the mineshafts, “in the pits” taking church to the people. A mine seems almost built for a house of worship, and the revival spread.

Wesley originally thought it “a sin to preach in the fields” when he heard of Whitefield, but within a few months, he was preaching to crowds of 20,000 people. Our models often hold us back and keep the kingdom from expanding like the old wineskin that’s lost it’s ability to be flexible and therefore expand. In the Great Awakening, and in most times of revival, what God was doing happened OUTSIDE of the confine of the church walls. So did Jesus’s ministry. Did you realize that? He wasn’t found where religious people were. He didn’t have a church. The Son of God came and barely set foot inside the temple for three years. His ministry was OUTSIDE of the church. My first church plant was in a Starbucks. My second in in a public park. My third is getting ready to plant in a gas station in the inner city.

John Calvin noted:

“the Master did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies to prescribe in detail what we ought to do because he foresaw that this depended on the state of the time, and he did not deem one form suitable for all ages…because he has taught nothing specifically, and because these things are not necessary to salvation nad for the upbuilding of the church ought to be variously cadmoodated to the customs of each nation and gea, it will be fitting (as the advantage of the church will require) to change and abrogate traditional practices and to establish new ones.” Calvin Institutes p1,208 IV.10.30

In planting your church, keep in mind that the early church was planted in Jerusalem, but met “house to house and in the temple courts.” What most people consider “temple courts” is a big box with expensive speakers. I maintain that the temple was merely the city center, the place where the majority of people trafficked, and if it had been the temple of Zeus, the apostles would have continued to meet there. Temple courts is synonymous with “public space”, the watering holes, the proximity spaces, the market place, the cultural hub. The question is, are you willing to go there and set up shop? Or would you rather hunker down in the bunker?

Source: MEETING WITH THE MAYOR

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MISSIONAL COGS

Sean Cronin — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 09:00:49 +0000

by Peyton Jones: COGS stands for Communities of grace. These are the best places to use your gifts. The gifts were given to the church, but like an old tie or wool knit sweater from grandma, they stay in the bottom of the drawer. Have you ever wondered why the position of elder has gifts wired into it like “must be hospitable”? It’s not to feed Christians that are already well fed!

It’s not for fellowship. It’s for evangelism! Your house is meant to be open. You’re meant to have your life as a point of interaction. Your house is shared, your family life is shared, your meals around your table are shared. It’s so that, like Jesus, you can get to know them, be relational, and reach out.

For this reason, we didn’t limit it to reading groups. We’ve started film clubs during the week, where we can talk about various redemption themes in films. Take I am Legend. That movie scared the bejeebies out of me. Yet, laced throughout were various redemption sign posts. The movie opens with a screen shot of an old poster on a brick wall reading “God has not abandoned us”. Throughout the movie there is a theme of God being present through little things like butterflies, but the main character is too busy to notice. Finally, in the climactic scene, a flesh eating mutant cracks the bullet proof glass, making a butterfly pattern of cracked glass. His mind races back to his daughter’s observation about God and butterflies, and he knows what he must do. He must sacrifice himself so that others can live. He realizes that he’s been like God, trying to save mutants who are ready to rip him apart…and get this, he’s yelling out, “I can save you” to them repeatedly, trying to tell them that their salvation is in the blood vial that he’s holding out. Lost, the X-files before that…Dallas in the 80’s? Wait, I’ve gone too far. But I hope you’ve seen by now that you could start a U2 fan club, or anything that would get people contributing, and you’re in.

So how do you find the needs?

Source: MISSIONAL COGS

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OUTREACH SHOULD BE GIFT-DRIVEN

Sean Cronin — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 10:00:27 +0000

by Peyton Jones: I don’t believe in sitting down and strategizing…the world’s needs are greater than my resources.

I can’t do everything, but I can do something, and I will not let the everything I cannot do, keep me from doing the something that I’m called to do.

Business models operate with the idea that you can draw lines across a whiteboard, predicting what you’re going to be doing, and how you’re going to branch out in the next couple of years. Great when you’re flipping widgets, but not so good when you’re dealing in Holy Spirit filled believers. I’ve talked about the gift driven model in Church Zero, but we don’t use lines. We use concentric rings. Inside the ring is our team symbolized by a bunch of dots. Outside the ring are the lost dots. We draw arrows from our dots to them. Those arrows represent our spiritual gifts. Once they are reached, we draw an arrow around the dots outside of the original circle. Now we have more dots.

More dots = more gifts.

But which ones? If we’ve just reached 3 creatives and want to reach the lost, then we figure that’s where the Holy Spirit wants us to go next. If he brings us 3 bikers, then we do stuff bikers like. If he brings us 3 single mothers then we start a mother’s support group. All of these are relational and involve these people getting involved in their own communities with things they are already familiar with. Paul became all things to all men, and therefore, we allow these people to stay themselves. They follow us into battle, but in reality, you might say we’re actually accompanying them. They perceive us to be in charge, but our plan from day one is to release them to do things through the power of the Holy spirit that they never dreamed possible.

Therefore, the question that anyone who wants to be effective in outreach has to ask is “How has the Holy Spirit equipped the people in front of me to reach this town?

When I started my first church plant, I’d been in ministry for 14 years, and a missionary for 5. I was burnt out. I told the team that I had a broad canvas, and a few brush strokes, but they needed to fill in the details. They didn’t know what I meant. I told them that I didn’t want to be in ministry anymore…just a normal guy. I told them that I didn’t have a red bat phone to heaven that was ringing off the hook with calls from the commissioner. Plus, I didn’t want to be Batman. (Did I just say that?) We looked around the group and asked, “What gifts do we have here?” We couldn’t use a business model or five year plan, but decided to use an organic model with no clue what we were doing. All we knew was that if the Holy Spirit was real, he’d lead us, move us, and reach the people through us that he was gunning for.

We had people who liked cooking, so they started a group that taught young single mothers how to cook healthy foods. We had college students who were addicted to Halo. We started tournaments. People got saved, and discipled in that group. They also got their butts kicked at Halo. Our guys were good.

So how do I find my gifts?

Source: OUTREACH SHOULD BE GIFT-DRIVEN

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