20somethingpastor.com

So this week has been a rather exhausting one

• Last Saturday, I had an event for a bunch of 6th graders who will be in my student ministry soon. It was kind of a Youth Ministry Boot Camp. 
• Then on Sunday I had a “State of the Union” meeting for our church and parents to update them on all that is happening in our student ministry. 
• Wednesday, our student ministry hosted a fundraising dinner and silent auction to raise money for our students so they can go to summer camp and what not. 
• Today, I preached for our entire church. That was nerve-racking not because I fear speaking in large groups but because I am a “tell it like it is” preacher. I don’t preach to make you feel good so I have a tendency to offend people. This was my first time preaching for my new church. 
• On top of that, I was the only pastor in the office this week. Which made for even more busyness and work

So… tomorrow is a much needed break.

FYI - My hopes are to have the audio up on my blog from my message this morning later this week I hope (fingers crossed)!

Recently, a lot of bloggers have been discussing, promoting, and sponsoring Compassion International. I have known about Compassion International for a long time and the youth ministry I lead together supports our own child.

In February of this year, a team of bloggers, traveled to Uganda to see the work Compassion International is doing, write and record what they experienced, and share the stories of the millions of children who desperately need help financially, but ultimately need to understand the love and hope of Christ. Anne Jackson was a part of the team and is the reason I knew about the trip.

These videos, below, are videos I wrote and my good friend Grant Downing at LifeChurch.tv filmed and edited for me. I wrote these for a message I did about Missions (both local and international). I think they fit well with this topic.

Where’s your treasure? To sponsor your own child go here!

After that last post I would like to clarify something. Not that I should have to explain anything but I will because I want you to understand my heart and where I come from. 

• I am (technically) a registered Republican. (Although that has no influence over who I vote for)
• I am EXTREMELY pro-life. Not the “bomb-your-abortion-clinic” type, but I do feel a weight to protect those who can’t protect themselves and I do consider it murder. (I don’t care if you agree with me or not)
• I am mostly well-behaved
• beer… so ridiculously unimportant that I won’t even answer that question

One of my ultimate fears as a pastor, is that one day I will look back over my life/ministry and realize that it was spent cheering for the wrong thing. That I spent all my energy, time, and money for things that in the end don’t really matter. 

For me, this is the fear that keeps me awake at night. This is the fear that keeps me on my knees in prayer begging God to keep me focused, humble, and willing. 

If we were truly honest, how many pastors/churches have filled their pews with conservative, well-behaved, pro-life Republicans who never causes any trouble, all think the same, and pride themselves on the fact that they don’t drink beer. But in the end, are more concerned with their appearance than Christ. What if they just ended up grooming themselves for the trip to hell?

God don’t ever let me start cheering for the wrong thing! Keep me focused, humble and willing to pursue Christ and lead others in the pursuit of You!

After more thought on this subject and reading scripture, I don’t claim to know all or have the ultimate answer for every church. But I will list some scriptures that have impacted my thoughts and then tell you what I have concluded.

• Genesis 41:35-36  Instruction for Egypt to store excess so they won’t be “ruined” during the famine.
• Proverbs 6:6-8  Even the animals understand that you store up in harvest time to prepare for winter.
• Proverbs 21:20  The wise store up excess but “a foolish man devours all he has.”
• Ecclesiates 11:2  Be obedient because “you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.”
• 1 Timothy 5:8  Our first responsibility is to our own “family”

Read the story of the “Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37) on your own. Answer this question, “Could this man have provided all the medical care and housing if he had no money in the bank?”

I think there is a fine line between having money for low-giving periods or money to help out people in time of emergency or catastrophe and hoarding money. But I think it’s Biblical and necessary to have an “emergency fund” or whatever you want to call it.

I will leave you with this: swerve.lifechurch.tv is a great blog. Recently, they asked a question about How Economic Uncertainty Affect the Church? It breaks my heart when I read a pastor commenting about how it was making an impact on his church to the point that they were a matter of, ”two to three weeks from shutting the church down.”

What do you think would be the pastor’s response to this topic?

So I had an interesting conversation the other day with some pastors about church cushion (Money). One of the pastors who is very passionate about following God in faith and actually has spend his entire life (is almost at retirement age) either in the Mission Field or as a Missions Pastor. He was saying that the church should act more on faith and give more money to mission trips, organizations, missionaries, etc. as opposed to sitting on a large amount of money for emergencies or for cushion in times of low giving. 

I didn’t say anything cause he is much older, wiser and has much more ministry experience. But I was thinking… “Isn’t wise to have an ‘emergency fund’ (Thank you Dave Ramsey) and not put your self in a vulnerable position that could lead to the church having to close its doors?” But then again, maybe we should live on more faith that if your church were following God’s direction, He would provide.

What do you think? What does your church do?

I have to admit up front on this one, this is not my original idea. No shame in using something from someone else as long as you give credit where credit is due. I took this from my former employer LifeChurch.tv. They refer to their “services” as “experiences.” I love that. As the Church, our goal is not to provide a service but to organize, plan and execute everything we do so that people can experience God and community with other believers. 

So in FUEL Student Ministry, on Wednesday Nights, we have “The Experience,” NOT a youth service. 

Over the past few months, my wife and I have been working so hard to lay a good foundation for our youth ministry we started leading in January. When we started we had about 30 students with 4 volunteers. Within a month we had some people leave the church and move across the country and found ourselves with a growing youth ministry and only 1 volunteer. We are still struggling through the volunteer situation but are up to 6 maybe 7. 

Over the past few months we have been spending a lot of one on one time with our students building trust and respect (because of past circumstances there wasn’t much trust or respect in regards to youth pastors). Things are going great and we are steadily and slowing growing. Leading our students through the idea of what church and ministry are supposed to be and what it is not. <- more on that to come.

(I have a lot of thoughts and rants about bad church philosophy) 

Just as a side note from yesterday’s post, about God and giving money. I just want to throw this out there

GOD DOESN”T NEED YOUR MONEY!!!!

He has never been running short on funds and had to take up a special offering. He has never had to put the universe on hold because the bills were piling up. Maybe ministries need your money to continue running and maybe some preachers need your money to… do whatever they do with the money. But God doesn’t need it.

We give because we take and take and take and use resources from the church and it’s only right that we keep up our end of the deal. We give because it’s not ours anyway. We give because our treasure should be in the next life, not this one. We give because we trust that God is our provider. We give because we are commanded to and it is an act of obedience.

We don’t give because God needs it.

Sorry for the rant but I just wanted to clear that up.

Love is Revealed through Action.

That is probably more of a no brain-er the more I think about it. But I think it goes deeper than just an outward behavior.

What does it mean to love God? Take a look at the poor widow in Mark 12:41-44. She gave two copper coins (not even worth a full penny) to the temple treasury while so many others were putting in thousands of dollars. Jesus told his disciples that she gave more.

Why?

Because her giving came from her poverty while the others came from their wealth. It cost them nothing to give that money away because they had so much extra. But she believed in something so much that she was willing to give up everything for the cause.

I think we all long to believe in something that much.

Where does your outward action come from? Are you obeying because it costs you nothing and it’s the right thing to do. Or do you believe in it so much that, you aren’t just willing, but you have given everything? (And I’m not talking about money here)