Changing Prayer Meeting into Prayer Meeting

Like most prayer meetings our prayer meeting was a bit of singing, a lot of discussion and a bit of prayer. It was prayer meeting in name only. It was really a midweek Bible study. The Lord is leading me to elevate prayer in the life of the church. I have to be honest I was a bit skeptical about folk who would go on and on about prayer. I’ve been through many, many weeks of prayer only to see my church, college or wherever turn out to be the same as it ever was few months later. I’ve already blogged about our revival. That was another experience that has let me to where we are now. Prayer meeting needs to be about prayer. We need to be about the business of calling upon God to move in our lives.

The elders and I are running seminar When God’s People Pray by Jim Cymbala. Its incredibly powerful stuff. The seminar is a mixture of Bible teaching and testimonies from members of the Brooklyn Tabernacle church who have experienced powerful life transformations due to the power of God manifested in an environment of prayer. I’ve encouraged members to invite people to what we will call our prayer service. I’m exited about what God will do for us.

This week and next week I’m preaching two sermons on prayer but we’ll also be giving extra time in the service for prayer. I don’t want to just be talking about prayer and not take the time to pray!

Typical board meeting…..not!

We took our church board on a mini retreat. We prayed, discussed some issues,  had fun. It doesn’t look like it but they were learning about team work. Our womens, health, singles, social activities leaders, one board floor member and an elder all in that scrum below.

Revive and Stay Alive!

Last Sabbath afternoon we finished our week of revival. Our theme was Revive and Stay Alive. In my experience revivals have lasted perhaps as long as the even itself. We had some good singing, powerful preaching from local Pastors and some fervent prayer. We had prayer and fasting to close the week. The last hour of the prayer and fasting was incredible. People began to open and share their deepest struggles and hurts. The room was thick with emotion, charged with earnest souls crying out to God. Some were nervous, others praised God for the breakthrough.  I have not heard such honesty. God is good! It was real. It was provocative and you knew the Spirit was working. We were bearing one another’s burdens. Our final song was To God be the Glory. We were praising because God came down to be with us.

“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”–Galatians. 6:2.

It time that we stop covering up and fixing things up. Let’s be real and allow the Holy Spirit to heal us in deep ways.

Presenting the Design Charrette Blues

I do this kind of stuff to keep me out of trouble.

Design Charette Day 3

We munched on pizza as we got into “it” last night. We had a site plan and some 3d modeling to discuss. Our new building has really begun to take shape. Flesh is really beginning to appear on the bones or is it drywall? This whole process has lifted our building committee onto another level of excitement and anticipation. We need to see how we can transfer that energy to the wider congregation.

There was a lot of discussion about the main worship space, naturally. My guess is that half the group favored a more contemporary approach and half a more traditional with stained glass windows and pews. Functionality is a big deal for me. I’m not really one for making the building look like a church. It needs to be an inviting and flexible building dedicated to the worship of God. Steeple’s and pew don’t make a church, its the lives of the people that go there.

Design Charette Day 2

We had an excellent start last night. We started around 6:30 pm with prayer, introductions and food! It was good to see that a good rapport developed very quickly between the building committee and the design team. There was a lot of back and forth which gave the design team a lot to work with.

I was really pleased to see how engaged the new members of the building committee were. It was if they had been involved in the development all along. We spent some time reviewing the design that came out of the the feasibility study.  Last night the design team went back to their hotel and began their work. I’m getting a buzz out of this. I’m already on the edge of my seat!

Had a brief  meeting this afternoon with the Architect and Engineer and Contractor. My head is spinning. Permits galore. I don’t remember things being ike this in the UK when it came to construction. I bet  Nehemiah didn’t haven’t to  deal with easements and special exceptions.  Then again, in those days if they had an objection to your building they would cut your head off!

Design Charette

Today we start the design Charette for our new building. Three architects are flying in from Utah from the design and build company Building God’s Way. This is exiting. For the next three days we (the building committee and the architects) will be working together to produce a preliminary design for our church. Its going to be a fast and furious process but I’m looking forward to it.

2020

It is Tuesday January 1st 2020 and the Potomac Conference of Seventh-day Adventists’ membership stands at 60,000. This is double the size it was in 2008. It’s a stunning achievement and many are still amazed by the incredible growth of the church over the past 10 years. It’s been the subject of many news reports and local blogs. Even Congressmen have made mention of it. There is an Adventist presence in all the major people groups and communities in its territory, which covers much of Virginia, DC and parts of Maryland. The majority of the churches in the conference are growing and connected to their communities. In nearly every church there is a buzz about making disciples and reaching the lost.

Of course this is fictional, we’re still in 2008. These aren’t the dreams of a young pastor but the vision that the Potomac Conference executive committee has voted. Here’s the vision:

1.    Conference doubles in size by 2020
2.    70% of Churches healthy in 7 years
3.    Establish presence in all major people groups and communities by 2020.

The Mission is to grow Healthy Disciple making churches. The values of the conference are integrity, spirituality, discipleship, teamwork and excellence. This is exiting. There are plans in the works that are designed to position our churches to experience renewal and growth. Keep praying. Keep serving.

The leaders of the Wheaton SDA church will be discussing our Vision at our annual leadership retreat in March. You already know our Mission:
1.    Uplift God in worship
2.    Share the good new about Jesus
3.    Embrace all people
4.    Develop the gifts of our members.

“We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision.”

Dead Dogs at the Kings Table

Tomorrow I’m preaching a sermon entitled “Dead Dogs at the Kings Table”. Its a retelling of the story found in 2nd Samuel 9. Mephibosheth is a cripple and he is taken in by King David. David shows him kindness for Jonathan’s sake. It’s one of the greatest but least known in the Bible. I love to preach it! Read it for yourself, its beautiful.

I’ve been thinking about how do I as a Pastor lead my church to a place where it reaches out to the lost. The Lord showed me that I must start doing it myself and they will follow. So often as Pastors we ask our members to do things that we ourselves do not do. We aske them to be disciples but are we disciples? We ask them to be more devoted to God but are we devoted?

The Lord tested me and revealed to me something about reaching lost people. I’ll post on it tomorrow.

The Mission

About two weeks ago I attended a Pastor/Teacher conference sponsored by the Potomac Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Potomac conference is the conference that I work for. The theme was “The Mission”. There was sense of passion and urgency that I have rarely seen at a workers meeting. The conference president, Bill Miller, talked about something we all know but do not talk about publicly. Many of our churches are dying or are at best plateaued in terms of growth. Over seventy percent of our conference churches are in this category! This is a grim reality.

Our conference has some radical (not necessarily new) ideas about how to return our churches to health and thereby growth. We should become mission focussed rather than focussed on our needs and wants as churches. The pastor should operate more as a leader rather than a manager. I can say amen to that one. Many of the new ideas come from the approach that Paul Borden, takes. Here’s what he has to say about the role of the pastor:

 

The primary challenges relate to the pastor’s role. Seminaries have historically trained pastors to function as chaplains, responsible for preaching, counseling, and pastoral care. As a result, one of the reasons so few churches grew past 300 prior to the eighties was because that was the most a person in that role could deal with. The church growth movement, however, began to change the paradigm of the pastor’s role. If the church is going to be focusing outward, touching an un-churched culture, then the pastor has to take on a different role:the role of leader.

Well, “nothing radical there” you might say. How about changing the organistional structure. How does a church board of ten people sound? What if that board only dealt with issues of policy rather than the color of the new carpet? What if the ministries only met to talk about ministry? What if pastors were coached on a regular basis in order to help them meet their goals? This is the direction Potomac conference is going. Many pastors I talked to were exited. It is exiting. I’ve just given you are snapshot. I’ll try and post more when I get it.