Leadership Videos from Verge Network

Many of you are involved in leadership in your local assemblies. Have you ever had experiences in ministry which seem to take away all your joy?  Sometimes the enemy of our souls has ways of creating intense frustration and discouragement.  Francis Chan looks at this at one of a number of videos at Verge Network’s YouTube channel.

Matthew 7:21 (NLT)

²¹ “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.

Here’s another message from the same channel. David Platt looks at the variety of beliefs — some of them somewhat wacky — belonging to people who identify as Christians. Can they really be Christ followers? I know some of you don’t have internet connections which allow you to watch videos, so some of the text is printed below.

David Platt says,

“We live in a day where is means almost nothing to be a Christian. According to research almost 4 out of every 5 Americans identify themselves as Christians…But in this group of self proclaimed Christians, less than half of them are involved in church on a weekly basis. Less than half of them believe the Bible is true. An overwhelming majority of them don’t have a biblical view of the world around them. So researchers went even deeper then to distinguish men and women who are ‘born again Christians,’ as if there’s any other kind of Christian. But these are people who say they’ve made a personal commitment to Jesus, they believe they’ll go to heaven, because they’ve accepted Jesus as their savior. And according to research nearly half of Americans are ‘born again Christians.’

But you look at this group of ‘born again Christians’ and researchers found that their beliefs and lifestyles and virtually indistinguishable from the world around them. Many ‘born again Christians’ believe their works can earn them a place in heaven. Others think that Christians and Muslims worship the same god. Some believe that Jesus sinned while He was on Earth. And an ever increasing number of ‘born again Christians’ just describe themselves as marginally committed to Jesus. So people you can use data like this to conclude that Christians are really not that different from the rest of the world. But I don’t think that interpretation of that research is accurate. I think the one thing that’s abundantly clear from those statistics is that there are a whole lot of people in our country who think that they are Christians, but they are not. There are scores of people—here and around the world who culturally distinguish themselves as Christians and biblically are not followers of Christ.”

The Spirit Gives Life

Today marks the beginning of Year Three here at Christianity 201. As I’ve stated before, I began writing this for purely selfish reasons: To keep my personal devotional life grounded and accountable, and to keep from being distracted by the issues, controversies and news stories that characterize tens of thousands of other Christian blogs, including Thinking Out Loud.

I am learning so much in the process of doing this, and I thank all of you who read regularly for your support and comments, and especially those of you whose writing has been “borrowed” to be part of the collection here.

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I’ve just started reading Spirit Rising: Tapping Into the Power of the Holy Spirit by Jim Cymbala (Zondervan). His first book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire was a unique reading experience simply because the story of what God did and continues to do at the Brooklyn Tabernacle is a very unique story. It’s a church that was birthed into existence through prayer. I’m only a chapter in, but I hope I can whet your appetite for Jim’s writing through this and a couple of other excerpts I’m sure will run here.

First, from the introduction by Francis Chan:

It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is of no help at all. (John 6:63)

The Holy Spirit is not merely helpful. He is our only hope. He is the one who gives life. Yet when people lack life, the church often points to other solutions. When church services lack life, we grasp at so many other methods to gry to generate excitement. This is not true at Brooklyn Tabernacle, where Pastor Jim has served faithfully for decades. Their solution to everything is prayer. And it shows…

…We all see problems in the church. We don’t need another book to point those out. We need the faith to believe that the solution is really quite simple: The Holy Spirit.

And from the first chapter by Jim Cymbala

The Holy spirit is God’s agent on earth, yet ye is the least understood, least preached about, and least discussed member of Trinity. And that is sad, because without him, our spiritual lives will always become a dry, mechanical struggle… I can’t think of anything else that will change your prayer life, your study of God’s Word, and your experience during worship in church more than inviting the  Spirit to join you in a new way…

…If you want power, confidence, joy, peace, and more love in your life, ask the Spirit to come in and do something new in you… I promise you that when he does, your spiritual life will cease to be dry and mechanical. Instead, it will be filled with awe at the power of the Spirit and the wonder of God’s goodness.

Francis Chan: The Heart of the Author

I mentioned the other day of keeping an eye on bestseller lists, and if there’s an author who has resonated with a whole lot of people at once, for whatever reason, you ought to check out what that author has to say.

I said all that in connection with Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love and the more recent Forgotten God.  A lot of people don’t know him yet, and I think another dimension — without embracing celebrity culture, something Chan himself would despise — is to check out other resources that help you to get to know the heart of the author.

Especially if you can see and hear that author speak.  What a difference to then be able to read the author’s printed works and hear the author’s voice inside your head as you read or imagine their smile or the spark of passion you see in their eyes.  But — and this is important — to also know more background as to where the author is coming from.

If you want to play this out with reference to Francis Chan, there’s a little 4-minute video that really says it all:

Sometimes certain natural giftedness plays out and certain authors and music artists simply work their way up the “success” ladder of Christian influence.  However, there are other times that I believe people are justified — even if it can be a little cliché — to say that God has “raised up” certain people with a unique message for our particular place in history.

If you’ve got 55 minutes to invest, here’s a recent message where Francis returned to Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, California after seven months away.  (If you’re on dial-up or have a slow connection, scroll down to the second link, which is audio only.) If your time is very limited, after an intimate time of getting re-acquainted with his former congregation, the sermon begins at 16:47.  Sort of.  Please remember, I’m not posting this because it’s the best Francis Chan sermon out there; I’m posting this because it reveals his heart.

This link below is for people who get frustrated with slower connections and lagging video; it’s just the audio of the same sermon.

Francis Chan: Do Not Assume You Are Good Soil

…the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity…

The above quotation, and what follows below belong to Francis Chan.  I’m probably the last person in the world to finally get around to reading Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, but when a book finishes as the number one book for 2010 in most Christian bookstore markets, I think that we all need to sit up and take notice of what people are reading…

In the parable of the sower, Jesus explained that the seed is the truth (the word of God).  When the seed is flung onto the path it is heard but quickly stolen away. When the seed is tossed onto the rocks, no roots take hold; there is an appearance of depth and growth because of the good soil, but it is only surface level. When the seed is spread among the thorns, it is received but soon sufficated by life’s worries, riches and pleasures. But when the seed is sown in good soil, it grows, takes root and produces fruit.

My caution to you is this: Do not assume you are good soil.

I think most American churchgoers are the soil that chokes the seed because of all thorns.  Thorns are anything that distracts us from God. When we want God and a bunch of other stuff then that means we have thorns in our soil. A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions or commitments are piled on top of it.

Most of us, have too much in our lives.  As David Goetz writes, “Too much of the good life ends up being toxic deforming us spiritually.”  A lot of things are good by themselves but all of it together keeps us from living healthy, fruitful lives for God.

I will say it again: Do not assume you are good soil.

-Francis Chan

Doing Ministry in the Flesh

Francis Chan:

Sometimes I leave Christian events wondering if we resemble the prophets of Baal in I Kings 18 more than Elijah, the prophet of God… The prophets of Baal had a loud, passionate gathering that lasted form morning till evening. When they were done, they had a great time of fellowship (I think you can call it that). But “no one answered; no one paid attention” (18:29). After all of that, Elijah prayed. God heard his prayer, and fire came down from heaven.

My favorite part of that story comes when it is all over and the prophets of Baal are saying, “The Lord — he is God! The Lord — he is God! (18:39). They didn’t say, “Elijah is a great speaker” or “Elijah sure knows how to connect with God!” They were stunned by God. They were in awe of his power. They knew that what they had experienced could not have been manipulated by Elijah. They experienced the power of God.

Is that what happens at the christian gatherings hyou attend? Or does it feel more like what the prophets of Baal experienced before Elijah prayed? We can have a great time singing and dancing ourselves into a frenzy. But at the end of it, fire doesn’t come down from heaven. People leave talking about the people who led rather than the power of God.

Forgotten God pp 143-144

Taking It To The Next Level

Today we began the day listening to a download of an Andy Stanley sermon on giving.   I gotta say it was a bit of a yawner — Andy’s a master speaker but the topic is too often done — until the last ten minutes, when Andy really took things to the next level and presented his vision of what his church would look like and what his church could do if people really embraced the idea of putting God first with their finances.

Then later in the day, we listened to a sermon by Francis Chan, who until recently hasn’t been part of our sermon download routine.   I’ve been impressed with things I have been hearing about him, and the sermon did not disappoint.   This is a guy who is totally sold out to God and literally drips passion with every sermon sentence.   He talked about the sin of Achan and how each one of us is a threat to our spiritual community if we are holding on to sin and sinful patterns.

This day was about the difference between good sermons and great sermons; and great sermons are the ones which truly shake us to our roots, and challenge us to actually do the things that Christ calls us to do.