“God does everything through people who understand they are nothing, and God does nothing through people who think they are everything.”
— Tullian Tchividjian
Category Archives: Ministry
Nothing and Everything
Discipline (Great Quotes!)
“Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.” —Roy L. Smith
“To live a disciplined life, and to accept the result of that discipline as the will of God—that is the mark of a man.” —Tom Landry
“All significant battles are waged within the self.” —Sheldon Kopp
“Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.” —George S. Patton
“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” —Thomas a Kempis
“Hard work is the accumulation of the easy things you didn’t do when you should have.” —Anonymous
(The INJOY Group)
IDEAS and INITIATIVE
“Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.” —Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari
“Success comes to the person who does today what you were thinking about doing tomorrow.” —Unknown
“No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.” —Winston Churchill
“An idea is worthless to you unless you use it.” —John C. Maxwell
“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Most people spend more time planning their grocery shopping then designing their future. The basic difference between people who live their dreams and those who only dream about how they would live, are the accuracy of their plans, their ability to generate new ideas, and their ability to take action.” —Unknown
“Motion causes friction.” —John C. Maxwell
“There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear.” —David Mahoney
(The INJOY Group)
A Cause that Will Not Fail
Haddon Robinson, preaching professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, recently told me that the biggest challenge to understanding a Scripture passage accurately is the context. That wasn’t new to me (hermeneutics was one of the first classes I took in seminary), but the example Haddon gave me drove home to me the power of Scripture applied with accuracy.
Haddon said that in the D.Min preaching program he directs, students are asked to come up with the main idea and application of Mark 4:35-41—Jesus calming the storm when the disciples feared it might sink their boat. The application that most students come up with is that, “Jesus can calm your storms of life. Whether it’s cancer or the loss of your job—whatever storm is raging in your
life—Jesus is there and calms the storm.”
The problem with that application, Haddon said, is that the disciples made it to the other side of the sea safely. A lot of people don’t survive the storm in real life. The cancer metastasizes and kills your father. You can’t find a job that replaces the income of the job you lost. How do you apply that passage for people who often don’t survive the storms of life?
The story of Jesus calming the storm, Haddon said, cannot be understood without knowing what the “seed” is in the previous parables. The seed is the disciples’ effort at spreading the message of the kingdom. The “Jesus calming the storm” story must be connected to the parables which precede it.
The point is that Mark 4:35-41 does not promise individual Christians physical deliverance from every storm in life. Rather, it promises that kingdom people are part of a grand enterprise that will succeed. If you give your life to God, no matter what storms you encounter, you are giving your life to a cause that will not fail.
After I hung up with Haddon, I thought for the rest of the day about the decisions I’ve made that have brought me to this point in life. I’ve often questioned, as I’ve watched my friends climb the corporate ladder and reap the financial rewards, whether I am wasting my life in ministry. I’m not. I’m in a business that is guaranteed success and whose Owner will someday make it worth my while.
(Dave Goetz, Editor of LEADERSHIP Resources and ChurchLeadership.Net)
Just a Clown
The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once told a story about a circus that caught fire. The flames from the circus fire spread to the fields surrounding the circus grounds and began to burn toward the village below. The circus master, convinced that the village would be destroyed and the people killed unless they were warned, asked if there was anybody who could go to the village and warn the people.
The clown, dressed in full costume, jumped on a bicycle and sped down the hill to the village below. “Run for your lives! Run for your lives! A fire is coming and the village is going to burn!” he shouted as he rode up and down the streets of the village. “The village is going to burn, run for your lives!”
Curious villagers came out from their homes and shops and stood along the sidewalks. They shouted back to the clown, laughing and applauding his performance. The more desperately the clown shouted, the more the villagers cheered.
The village burned and the loss of life was great because no one took the clown seriously. After all, he was just a clown.
(Soren Kierkegaard; told by Wayne Rice, Hot Illustrations for Youth Talks, p. 68)
The Choice
To be alive is to hurt. The choice is not whether to hurt, but how. That you can choose. You can choose the discomfort of the discipline of praying when you don’t feel like it, or the desolation and terminal fatigue of life and ministry without prayer.
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 51.
The Enchanted Ground
In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the pilgrims were leaving the Delectable Mountains after the shepherds warned them to beware of traversing the Enchanted Ground. The overwhelming desire there would be to fall asleep, never again to awake. And it was just as the shepherds told them it would be: the drowsiness there became nearly unbearable. Hopeful pleaded for a nap, just one little rest. But Christian made him talk. He asked him the question, “By what means were you led to go on this pilgrimage?” In other words, he asked, “Why are you on this journey? Why are you doing this?” By telling the story, and thus remembering why he was on the pilgrimage, Hopeful kept talking and kept walking.
It is remembrance that keeps us awake; it is significant that the supreme act of Christian worship, the Lord’s Supper, draws us into fellowship with Christ by calling us to remember his mercy and love for us. It is a love feast spread out upon a redeemed and quickened memory. To pray is also to remember. It is to look into the face of the One who came to our side and saved us when we were lost and then called us into his service. It is to nourish the tender first love that Christ so passionately wants us to remember (Rev. 2:5). To pray is to connect again with the love that compelled us to declare the Good News to the world. To pray is to remember why we are doing this thing called ministry.
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 49.
A Reality Check
“Prayer would be of inestimable value if it did nothing more than remind us of who we are before God. Unless the Lord builds the house, our work is useless (Psalm 127:1). Apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). Prayer is a reality check.”
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 49.
The Ephesian Syndrome
Driving is the word that describes the schedules of so many of us who are no longer motivated to do the real work of the ministry. Hyperactivity is to authentic motivation as junk food is to a nourishing diet. It gives us the feeling of satisfaction while starving us to death. In the New Testament it is the Ephesian syndrome described in Revelation 2:1–7. The first love is gone, and now all that is left is the form and the trappings. This may be the malady most preyed upon by the innumerable seminars offered today on the techniques of church leadership. When we forget “why” we become obsessed with “how.” Where once there was creativity and the tenderness born of deep love, there is now only the sex manual.
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 45.
Prayerless Preachers
“Prayerless preachers cannot move the hearts of people, let alone move the heart of God.”
(Del Fehsenfeld, Ablaze With His Glory, p.39)
SLAVERY
“Servant” in our English New Testament usually represents the Greek doulos (bondslave). Sometimes it means diakonos (deacon or minister); this is strictly accurate, for doulos and diakonos are synonyms. Both words denote a man who is not at his own disposal, but is his master’s purchased property. Bought to serve his master’s needs, to be at his beck and call every moment, the slave’s sole business is to do as he is told. Christian service therefore means, first and foremost, living out a slave relationship to one’s Savior (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
What work does Christ set his servants to do? The way that they serve him, he tells them, is by becoming the slaves of their fellow-servants and being willing to do literally anything, however costly, irksome, or undignified, in order to help them. This is what love means, as he himself showed at the Last supper when he played the slave’s part and washed the disciples’ feet.
When the New Testament speaks of ministering to the saints, it means not primarily preaching to them but devoting time, trouble, and substance to giving them all the practical help possible. The essence of Christian service is loyalty to the king expressing itself in care for his servants (Matt. 25:31-46). Only the Holy Spirit can create in us the kind of love toward our Savior that will overflow in imaginative sympathy and practical helpfulness towards his people. Unless the spirit is training us in love, we are not fit persons to go to college or a training class to learn the know-how or particular branches of Christian work. Gifted leaders who are self-centered and loveless are a blight to the church rather than a blessing.
(Your Father Loves You by James Packer, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, Page 3.)
The Collection 