Friday, February 28, 2014
What are you waiting for
Why Those Who Help You Plant a Church Leave So Early
By Dave Page
I had a dream of having friends I started the church with go the distance with me serving as ministry partners for forty years and then riding together off into the sunset much like Billy Graham has done with Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea. It didn’t happen.
Here’s what I know: Those who start the journey with you seldom finish with you. In the church planting world I call this principle THE LAW OF SCAFFOLDING. The people you start the church with are not the people you grow the church with. This is one of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a church planter. I am a highly relational person – a people person. I enjoy people and working together as a team to see changed lives. It was emotionally painful for me anytime somebody left the church. However, part of the process of growth was learning the law of scaffolding.
In the late 1800’s Missiologist John Nevius once referred to missionaries to China as “scaffolds” to be removed when the building was established. Scaffolding is a temporary structure used to support people and material in the construction or repair of buildings. It must eventually be dismantled and removed from the building.
In church planting scaffolding refers to believers in the core group that God uses to help build the early structure of the church body. They are compelled by a vision of starting something new from scratch. Most of them are early members of the new church that transferred in from other local churches to help get the church off the ground. Once the church grows and becomes sustainable these pioneers normally move on to do it again somewhere else.
SWAT (Servants Willing and Temporary) workers are a unique type of scaffolding. SWAT workers are believers on loan from other churches in the area who help serve on a temporary basis, usually just at the monthly preview services and at the grand opening. After the church starts they return to their own church.
I ended up starting three churches so I went through this process multiple times. I learned to prepare for it after the first experience and how to better deal with it. Here are three lessons I learned that I hope will help you on your journey:
Don’t Beat Yourself Up When People Leave
Whenever people left our church I took it personally. I thought it was a reflection on my leadership ability and maybe it was but I needed to learn to not beat myself up when people left. Early on I tried to hold onto people and even begged one person not to leave. I learned it is better to bless people as they go. You can’t effectively lead those who don’t want to be on your team. Move with the movers and trust God to lead those who leave to a church where they fit better.
Don’t Believe The Fallacy That Good People Can’t Be Replaced
Whenever a key player would leave my team I would panic. Who is going to replace this star player? In the beginning I thought nobody could replace them. Some of the hardest losses were people who were tithers. Not only did the church lose the service of these gifted people but it also took a hit financially. I needed to change my perspective from one of scarcity to abundance. I needed to increase my faith and believe God could and would replace those who left. I learned that there are good people all around me and saw God replace what I thought was irreplaceable.
Do Appreciate Those Who Were Briefly With You
The wise sage Solomon said, “There is a season for everything, and a time for every event under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). There is a season when a unique person is needed to help the leader succeed. This is especially true at the beginning of a church plant. God brings highly skilled people to help the church get to the next level that would not have been possible without them. These people travel with the leader for just a season and then move on. I learned to let them go gracefully. I realized that some of them needed to play that role for other leaders.
It’s never any fun seeing people leave for whatever reason. It hurts. I miss many of them. I hope they miss me too. I never want to get to a point where it doesn’t hurt. The good news is some people will stay! And for that I am extremely grateful. These people will charge hell with you with a squirt gun! Celebrate these people. Love these people. Appreciate these people. Reward these people. Treasure these people. They will always have a special place in my heart.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
THE 4 LEGS OF MARRIAGE
THE 4 LEGS OF MARRIAGE
By Mark Driscoll
The next time you sit in a chair with four legs, consider how unstable it would be with only one, two, or three legs.
Marriage is like that. For a marriage to be stable, secure, and solid, it needs four legs. Anything less, and the marriage starts to fall over and crash.
Grace and I are very honored and excited to be teaching at the Real Marriage event tonight and tomorrow. We don’t pretend to have gotten it all right the first time, but we do find great joy in helping both singles and couples prepare for married life.
For a marriage to be stable, secure, and solid, it needs four legs.
Over the years, we’ve done a number of marriage events, but with five kids, a church, and the demands of life we just cannot spend much time away from home, even though we want to help as many people as we can. Subsequently, we are thankful for the opportunity that technology provides to serve people in any place from one place.
In addition to fielding live questions during the event from people joining us live and online, we will be teaching four sessions, talking about couples as worshipers, lovers, friends, and legacy-makers. These are the four proverbial legs on the chair.
1. WORSHIPERS
The foundation of everything, including marriage, is worship. It cannot be overstated how vital it is that a couple approaching marriage or in marriage worship God together, because your marriage exists ultimately for God’s glory.
However, Satan attacks marriage and has since the beginning. In fact, the Bible opens with a wedding and quickly moves to a war, as Satan did not even show up until after our first parents were married. The reason that Satan so hates Christian marriage is because it is supposed to be a reflection of the gospel, since Jesus loves the church like a groom loves his bride. However, when the Enemy shows up, it is not uncommon for a couple to forget his work and think that their spouse is their enemy, rather than remembering that their spouse is their ally in a war against their Enemy.
The foundation of everything, including marriage, is worship.
Because we both are worshipers and sinners, we are prone to be idolaters. When this happens, a good thing (like marriage or a spouse) becomes a god thing, which is a bad thing. Marriage is not heaven. Your spouse is not your savior. And if the glory goes to the husband or the wife instead of Jesus, it will crush them, because it is too heavy to endure.
On a scale of 1–10, how are you and your spouse or fiancé as worshipers?
2. LOVERS
Before sin entered the world, there was sex. It was without sin and without shame (Gen. 2:18–25). In God’s design, marriage is for one man and one woman. And your standard of beauty is supposed to be your spouse, which helps safeguard against coveting, lusting, and adulterating.
Once sin enters the world, sex is prone to be seen as a god or gross.
Those who see sex as a god are consumed by it, addicted to it, and ruled by it. Pornography is fuel for this forest fire that is burning down marriages at an unprecedented rate. Sex as God is dominant in the world.
Marriage is not heaven. Your spouse is not your savior.
Those who see sex as gross are often thinking about how gross “sex as god” is, but they forget sex as the real God intended it and redeemed it. Sex as gross is dominant in the church.
The answer to sex as god or gross is to see sex as a gift (1 Cor. 7:3–5). God gives us this gift for a variety of reasons, including pleasure, children, knowledge, protection, comfort, and oneness.
On a scale of 1–10, how are you and your spouse as lovers?
3. FRIENDS
To say that God is Trinitarian is to say that God is a Friend who has Friends. To say that we were made in God’s image is to say that we were made to be a friend and have friends. This is why, even though sin had not yet entered the world, God said it was not good for us to be alone (Gen. 2:18). His answer for our loneliness was a friend called a spouse.
This concept is almost entirely missing in every one of the 187 marriage books that Grace and I opened in preparation for writingReal Marriage. However, we believe that friendship is incredibly vital to marriage. This concept of friendship, and what it is and is not, has transformed our marriage. We often stress to our children, singles in our church, and married couples we know that friendship with your spouse (or potential spouse) is absolutely essential. A friendship is like a garden: it has to be planted, tended, nourished, and weeded for it to be fruitful and alive.
On a scale of 1–10, how are you and your spouse or fiancé as friends?
4. LEGACY-MAKERS
The first day of marriage is incredibly important. But the last day of marriage is the most important.
Will you still be married? Will you be friends? Will you look back on your life with your spouse smiling or weeping?
Proverbs 13:22 says, “A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children” (NIV). What kind of legacy will you leave maritally, spiritually, and financially? Do you have a plan to leave a godly legacy?
A friendship is like a garden: it has to be planted, tended, nourished, and weeded for it to be fruitful and alive.
There are days in every marriage where we are ready to throw our hands in the air, throw our towel in the ring, and throw wisdom to the side. On those days when folly is near, we need to keep wisdom on our horizon and keep walking toward the future that God has given us a vision for.
On a scale of 1–10, how are you and your spouse or fiancé as legacy-makers?
