Honeysett on Leading Change

What do leaders bring to the table to help put the supremacy of God at the heart of all church life and church activities?

1. The leader's life. This is the big different and addition to secular leadership models. In the world we incentivise change with remuneration. In the church we do it with godly role modelling. Timothy and Epaphroditus are used in Philippians 2 as the examples of godly discipleship and behaviour. Paul is unafraid to say "follow me as I follow Christ." The most important element in what a change-bringing leader does is what is that leader like?

2. Aligning motives to Christ. Our identity is deeply rooted in Christ. "I no longer live but it is Christ who lives in me." Unless leaders and congregation are saying a whole-hearted amen to that then change to bring motives in line with Christ is impossible. There are two key elements in such aligning of motives:

(a) a clear view of Jesus in the Bible; of what he calls us to to do; a deep desire to humble ourselves and do what he does. Because a willingness to accept the cost of carrying the cross means we have already accepted the sacrifice that change requires

(b) a clear view of other people - especially leaders - who are sacrificially following Christ on whom we can model our discipleship

3. Clear discernment. Leaders bring analysis of the situation that is readily graspable

4. A knowledge of the means at the churches disposal to bring change, and to bring it positively rather than negatively

5. Good communication of vision so that there is a growing sense of stakeholding and teamwork. This is hard when people have been allowed to join the congregation with no sense of team or purpose, no connection to vision and values

6. An ability to structurally organise the church around vision. It is no good for a church to have a great mission statement but assume that it just happens because we have a good mission statement. No, we have to organise around the mission statement for it to have any concrete reality

7. An ability to apply the consequences of vision to every area of church life, evaluating every area according to vision. This is usually the stumbling block because you have to introduce evaluative processes to an informal culture which isn't used to them. And you will need to stop doing things that don't meet the vision, but those things will be emotionally important to some people in the church

Honeysett on Change

I think of the change-making leader as the one who:



* Deals in core motivations, helping the congregation align their motivations to Christ and Christ's purposes
* Clarifies present and future need with biblically-driven future vision
* Helps others understand and embrace godly opportunity through clear communication
* Focuses cooperative teamwork with enthusiasm and joy in God
* Smooths transition with wisdom and the affection of Christ
* Absorbs angst with prayerfulness, compassion and kindness, minimising future distress

Honeysett on Change

Spiritual leadership is NOT the same as other organisational leadership. That is not to say we don't have a lot to learn from secular leadership models and theory, but those models will only take us so far.

Spiritual leadership involves knowing what God wants for his people in his local church, using God's methods to get them there, relying on God's power to do it. Therefore the process of change and the methods of initiating change that are available to Christian leaders are not necessarily the same as in any other organisation.

Organisational change in churches starts with spiritual roots. Roots of godliness, spiritual perception and hunger for God. That is the baseline starting point. When we meet situations where it seems impossible to bring necessary organisational change because of the sheer degree of resistance, our first response is to pray and teach into these areas. Because gospel-centred change emerges from gospel-centred convictions about ourselves, about God, about the church and its purpose.

If you don’t believe that the purpose of the church is to declare God’s excellencies to a dying world, then any call to change it to produce that is threatening. If you think that activities are good in and of themselves regardless of any connection with glorifying God, magnifying him and drawing attention to him, then you will never be able to stop those activities or replace them with ones that do.

Unless the reality of God’s promises grip people they won’t adjust their lives to base all they do on them. Unless the grace of God in Christ is thrilling them, they won’t attempt new things with an attendant risk of failure, because they are content with the way things are.

Murray on Legalism

A particularly insightful blog post from David Murray on the legalism family - and yes, I think we all fall prey to being one of these 'members' at various times, as well as meeting them in person. Thank God for His transforming Grace to us all!!!

I’d like to introduce you to four members of the Legalism family that I’ve frequently run into in pastoral ministry. They are among the most miserable people that you can possibly meet.

Mrs Try-Harder is trying to reach heaven by her good works. You’ll know her if you meet her, because she talks so much about herself that you’ll hardly get a word in. You certainly won’t be asked any questions about your own life and interests. If you manage to speak about the Gospel of grace, and “Whiter than snow” salvation, she may go quiet for a while and smile in a sort of condescending way. But she soon manages to change the subject from God’s Works to her own again.

Mr Addition knows the law so well that he’s decided to add quite a few of his own. He is often motivated by a desire to see Christians live more godly lives and feels sorry that God left so many gaps and grey areas in matters of personal conduct. So, to help everyone else he has scoured past tradition to fill in the gaps and eliminate the grey areas. There are two things Mr Addition hates. He hates being asked, “Where does the Bible actually forbid this or require this?” And he hates people pointing out his own failures in areas the Bible is crystal clear on. He’s much happier talking about his own laws rather than God’s.

Mr Contract has had quite a sad upbringing. He was raised in a family that believed in grace, but which conducted relationships on the basis of law. If a sister did something for a brother, the brother knew that he would have to return the favor soon, or else he would be reminded of his debt (usually in the middle of an unrelated argument). No one seemed to do anything for anyone else out of sheer love, without expecting repayment. Long records were kept of how much each had done for, or given to, the other. And woe betide anyone who failed to repay in kind before the next argument. Unfortunately this quid pro quo, like for like, commercial contract spirit is often carried into adult relationships and even into their relationship with God. For example, Mr Contract finds it difficult to receive grace from God or gifts from others without thinking immediately about how to quickly repay and equalize the accounts. Don’t ask him to do anything for you, unless you are willing to do something in return, usually with a bit of interest. And never ask him to go above and beyond the call of duty. He knows his rights! Having grasped and enjoyed little of grace himself, he is not going to show it easily to others.

Mr Pleaser is a pastor. Yes, pastors can be legalists too. Sometimes they look awfully like Mrs Try-harder. Regrettably, they are sometimes influenced too much by Mr Addition, who always seems to have the loudest voice in the fellowship. And too often they do their work out of a sense of contractual duty, rather than out of love for Christ and His people. But most often, Mr Pleaser’s day is dictated by the expectations of others, a legalism as miserable as all the others. Instead of being motivated to serve God’s people by his own experience of divine grace and love, Mr Pleaser ends up being pushed and pulled by the desire to avoid criticism or receive praise. His daily agenda and schedule is determined not by love for the Lord but by trying to live up to other people’s demands. Instead of serving the Lord whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light, Mr Pleaser puts himself under the cruel, relentless, insatiable yoke of other people’s expectations.

I am sure that you will have frequent opportunity to meet these sad and sorry members of the Legalism family. (Sometimes, you only need to look in a mirror). If you do, I hope you will take them to the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I hope you will introduce them to Jesus who calls these weary and burdened souls to find perfect rest in Him. I hope you will show them how, through the cross, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us.

May God use us to break up this needy family, and to build up the happy family of His free grace.

Honeysett on Training Leaders

Is your church a place where the following are normal expectations:

1. Leaders of all activities (especially home groups) being carefully and regularly nurtured and trained
2. That the Lord will regularly raise up future full time leaders who will initially be identified, encouraged, trained and released to exercise embryonic leadership gifts in your church
3. Evaluation of future possibilities for winning the lost and extending the kingdom in your area. Leaders and congregation praying for God to fulfil the needs exposed by your evaluation
4. Honouring and equipping embryonic leaders, through current leaders being freed to give enough time to their development

If the answer is no to most or all of the above you should anticipate that you will face a significant stall in the coming few years. There is every possibility that you will cease to be missional. Reasons for this may include:

1. Your congregation not valuing leadership or wanting to be led. This may indicate certain theological convictions about leadership, but is more likely to show that a majority of the congregation have moved into maintenance mode in which the meeting of their spiritual needs assumes a greater priority than making disciples
2. You will be very likely to search externally for your next pastor (or the one after that) only to find that traditionally reliable sources have dried up
3. You will discover that you have contextualised yourself in the past and refused to adapt to reach a different world. This makes your church inherently unattractive for potential next-generation leaders who are asking the question “where can I work with a congregation that wants to be equipped for building the church and winning the world?”
4. Your church culture assumes that wherever leaders come from, it isn’t your church. If you ever have an embryonic leader the governing paradigm is that you send them to be trained elsewhere and buy back in fully formed. Therefore you have lost any internal base of training and development skills. Therefore the emergence and development of leaders in your church for your church (and the wider church) becomes much more unlikely precisely because it is abnormal. God may have his hand on a person for leadership, but human obstacles may well prevent them from exploring his call
5. You, personally, didn’t make passing on leadership a priority

The foundational issue underlying the emerging leadership crisis in UK churches is one of mindset at a local church level:

1. The average local church is not producing any leaders
2. It is rare to find local churches freeing up significant amounts of leadership time for developing embryonic leaders
3. Only a tiny percentage of churches devote any time to training elders, deacons, home group leaders, evangelism facilitators or Sunday School teachers

Questions any leader should be asking:

1. Are you allowed to step back from being the all competent doer-of-everything, to take a strategic view and invest in key people for the future? If not, why?
2. Do you train elders, deacons and home group leaders in your church? If not, why?
3. What training and resources that you currently don’t have would make that a practical and achievable possibility for you?
4. Who are your 20 (or 10, or 5) most likely potential leaders for 2020? What would you have to invest in them to allow their ministry to take off?
5. What would this require in terms of time, energy and resources? Why are the necessary resources not devoted to this in your church? What else would you have to sacrifice to make it possible? Would your congregation allow you to make the necessary sacrifices? If not, why?

At this moment in evangelicalism in the UK, the development of missional leaders in our churches for our churches is the number one key priority for the health of the church nationally. Neglecting it is an unaffordable luxury. Devoting energy elsewhere while neglecting this is likely to prove a terrible false economy, because if our churches lack biblical leaders in 15 years time – and at current rates of progress very many will – then at that point all other ministries of the local church that depend on biblical leadership will also take a fatal blow.

Bonhoeffer on Silence

Silence is misunderstood as a solemn gesture, as a mystical desire to get beyond the Word. Silence is no longer seen in its essential relationship to the Word, as the simple act of the individual who falls silent under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already focused on the Word, as children are quiet when they enter their father’s room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and living and dwelling within us. We are silent early in the morning because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to bed because the last word also belongs to God. We remain silent solely for the sake of the Word, not thereby to dishonour the Word but rather to honour and receive it properly. In the end, silence means nothing other than waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing.

Driscoll on Mission and the Church

The church obeys the Great Commission to evangelize and make disciples. The church is an evangelistic community where the gospel of Jesus is constantly made visible through its proclamation of the gospel, the witness of the members' lives, and its Spirit-empowered life of love. From the first day, 'the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved' because they took Jesus' command seriously: 'You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.'

The church is to be an evangelistic people on mission in the world, passionate to see lost people meet Jesus Christ as Savior, God, and Lord. Any church submitting to the Holy Spirit and obedient to Scripture wants fewer divorces, addictions, thefts, and abuses and knows the only way to see that happen is to make more disciples. The church loves people and is continually and painfully aware of the devastation that is wrought in this life and in the life to come for those who are not reconciled to God. Therefore, while not imposing religion on anyone, the church of Jesus Christ is to constantly be proposing reconciliation with God to everyone.

Christian Smith on Therapeutic Deism

What do you think is the number one most popular religion in America?
I’ll give you a hint: its not Christianity.
Its also not Islam, Judiasm, Buddhism, Taoism, or the Home Shopping Network.
According to Christian Smith, a sociologist at Notre Dame, the primary expression of faith in our day–at least for young adults–is what he calls “Moral Therapeutic Deism.”
This religion is characterized by five beliefs:
–There is a God who created earth and watches over it
–God wants people to be nice, fair and good (as it taught in the Bible and most other religions)
–The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself
–God doesn’t need to be involved in your life except when there’s a problem that needs Celestial Performance Enhancement
–Good people go to heaven when they die.

This is a religion that is far more about comfort, individualism and conformity that it is about meaning, calling, and sacrifice. What makes it particularly challenging is that it is not offered through a new MTD movement or denomination. It is actually catching on and being practiced in churches where we leaders think of ourselves as historically Christian.
It cannot sustain a life.
It cannot build a community.
It cannot call people to take up a cross.
We want something more.

One other piece of bad news has to do with where young adults learn MTD.
I’ll give you a hint. Its mostly from older adults. These are themes that have captured our culture in such deep ways that we’re hardly aware of them.

Marcus Honeysett on Church Growth

The growth of the Kingdom of God involves constant change, by definition. A church that wants to be in exactly the same place in 10 years time is extremely complacent. It will atrophy. Leaders the the people who mainly expect to receive and shape God-given vision and direction for where the church and its mission should be in the future.

However all churches tend towards liking stability and predictability in their organisational life. Change is the biggest threat to the security. Therefore being able to lead through change is critical to church and kingdom growth.

I can think of 6 reasons why change might be necessary in a church:

1. Some area of church life, activity or witness is not as good as it could be. Some things may need to stop to allow the capacity to develop new ones

2. The church has distanced itself from the present. Any church that deals with the realities of its surrounding culture by withdrawal or avoidance is doomed to never speak the gospel to that culture. Far too many churches in the UK have decided that their ideal era is some time before the present. Every year that passes makes them a year more out of touch

3. The church has a wrong view of itself. For example they have become the inward looking pastoral community rather than a biblically outward looking missional community

4. Problems arise that need fresh solutions

5. A church becomes structurally set up to run favourite activities rather than to facilitate all the believers in living out gospel vision

6. Comfort has replaced kingdom growth. The church has become satisfied with the unchanging status quo

Whether a church develops for future gospel extension or concretises itself in the past will largely be decided by whether leaders are allowed to lead for change, and how they lead for change.

Tim Chester on Repentance

Trying to change to impress God, others or ourselves puts us at the centre of our change project. It makes change all about my looking good. It is done for my glory. And that's pretty much the definition of sin. Sin is living for my glory instead of God's. Sin is living life my way, for me, instead of living life God's way, for God. Pharisees do good works and repent of bad works. But gospel repentence involves repenting of good works done for wrong reasons.

Murray on Ministry

Pastors are usually all too aware of their weaknesses and keep their guard up there. But, often the devil comes in through the unguarded door of our strengths to make havoc of our lives and ministries.

* The pastor who is blessed with coolness under pressure, can seem unfeeling and detached.
* The pastor who is blessed with a desire to please and serve others, can become a slave to people-pleasing.
* The pastor who is blessed with a huge theological mind, can choke his poor lambs with indigestible doctrine.
* The pastor who is blessed with love for his work, can become a workaholic.
* The pastor who is blessed with a "burden for souls," can become severely depressed with the unresponsiveness of the lost.
* The pastor who is blessed with a sensitive heart, can exhaust and deplete his emotions in counseling.
* The pastor who is blessed with an administrative ability, can become diverted by committee work, minutes, reports and agendas.
* The pastor who is blessed with a "thick skin," can become immune to valid criticism.
* The pastor who is blessed with leadership skills, can become a manager more than a shepherd.
* The pastor who is blessed with a sense of humor, can become a foolish clown more than an ambassador of the King of kings.
* The pastor who is blessed with an eloquent tongue, can rely on his oratory more than on the Holy Spirit.
* The pastor who is blessed with a logical mind, can end up producing sermons that stimulate the mind but chill the heart.

How much we need to look towards our Almighty Christ, who is able to defeat every devilish strategy by giving us a sense of weakness, vulnerability, and need in the areas we think are our strengths. And, in a further display of grace, He also makes our weaknesses the stage for displaying His strength (2 Cor. 12:9).

Carson on Preaching

When Paul attests [in Acts 20:27] that this is what he proclaimed to the believers in Ephesus, the Ephesian elders to whom he makes this bold asseveration know full well that he had managed this remarkable feat in only two and a half years. In other words, whatever else Paul did, he certainly did not manage to go through every verse of the Old Testament, line by line, with full-bore explanation. He simply did not have time.

What he must mean is that he taught the burden of the whole of God's revelation, the balance of things, leaving nothing out that was of primary importance, never ducking the hard bits, helping believers to grasp the whole counsel of God that they themselves would become better equipped to read their Bibles intelligently, comprehensively. It embraced

* God's purposes in the history of redemption (truths to be believed and a God to be worshiped),
* an unpacking of human origin, fall, redemption, and destiny (a worldview that shapes all human understanding and a Savior without whom there is no hope),
* the conduct expected of God's people (commandments to be obeyed and wisdom to be pursued, both in our individual existence and in the community of the people of God), and
* the pledges of transforming power both in this life and in the life to come (promises to be trusted and hope to be anticipated).

Murray on Spiritual Conversation

How do you guide the conversation to produce a profitable discussion? Until now, I've never sat down and thought about what questions I ask people. But I've tried below to list some questions that have been helpful. It's important to ask these questions in a friendly and natural way, rather than in an accusatory or "clipboard" way. Sometimes I find it easier to direct some of these questions to the children initially, as they often talk much more freely about spiritual matters.

* Is there anything you would like me to pray for?
* What have you been reading in your Bible? Anything that's helped you or puzzled you?
* What do you find difficult about reading the Bible?
* What do you feel burdened about in prayer?
* Is there anything you would like to hear a sermon on? Any verses you would like explained?
* Are there any sermons that you've found helpful... confusing... challenging?
* What did you think about the sermon on...?
* Would you say you are going forward spiritually, or backwards?
* Are you reading any good Christian books? Is there anything you want to share from it?
* Have you found any verses that are helping you to live life and prepare for eternity?
* What gifts do you think the Lord has given you? Do you feel the church is making most use of your gifts?
* How would you describe yourself: Unsaved, saved and sure of it, or not sure?
* Do you think much about death and life after death? Do you feel prepared for that? How are you preparing?
* What is your hope of heaven? What reason will you give for being admitted there?
* What do you think of Jesus Christ?
* What would you most like to change in your life?
* What is your greatest fear?
* Are you facing any difficult challenges?
* Is there any one thing that stops you from following Christ?
* Children, what have you been learning in Sunday School?
* Do you have any questions for me?

Maybe only one question will be required to start a profitable conversation. The ultimate aim is to find out where people are spiritually, and how you can help them either to be saved, to be sanctified, or to be of more service to the church.

Spurgeon on Reading

The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers and expositions of the Bible.