Josh Hunt's blog

What makes groups grow, part 2

2010-09-17T22:40:00.001-06:00

Note: this article is one of six articles that eventually grew into a book: Make Your Group Grow. Available here: www.youcandouble.com

I have just completed three months of asking 1031 teachers thirteen question designed to help us understand what makes groups grow. This article is the second in a series of reports on this survey. (Note: this is not a scientifically randomized survey, but rather a survey of group leaders that I filled out surveys online and at conferences.) I divided the findings into four sections:

Things that didn't matter hardly at all. (Less than 10% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top group)
Things that only mattered a little. (Between 11% and 100% difference likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that mattered a lot. (If you are in the top group in these factors you are twice as likely--or more--to be growing than if you are in the bottom group. Between 101% and 1000% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that matter most. (If this is true of you, you are almost 11 times more likely to be growing than if it is not. More than 1000% difference in likelihood of growth between the top group and the bottom group.)

Last week we gave an overview and talked about things that didn't matter much. For that article, see www.joshhunt.com/mail252.htm This week we will move on to the second grouping: things that matter a little.

#1 - Time spent on group more than time spent on the lesson

I predicted that this would matter. I thought it would matter more than it did.

A Sunday School teacher or group leader is very different from a school teacher. Paul spoke of the idea that "we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children." 1 Thessalonians 2:7 (NIV) and, "For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory." 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 (NIV) Sounds more like a parent than a school teacher.

Jesus' concept of making disciples was largely around what the Navigators call the "with them" principle. "He appointed twelve--designating them apostles--that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach." Mark 3:14 (NIV) His plan for making disciples had a lot to do with spending time--lots of it--with them.

For all these reasons I predicted that teachers who spent lots of time with the students would be growing and teachers who spent lots of time on the lesson would not. Again, I was wrong.

Spending time with students is a predictor of the growth of a class. Teachers who spend more time with their students than they spend on the lesson are more likely to be growing than those who spend more time on the lesson than they do on their students. But, only marginally so.

Teachers who spend more time with students than they do on the lesson are 34% more likely to be growing than those who spend more time on the lesson than the spend with their students.

I have a guess as to why this is true. People who spend more time on the lesson are more likely to be better teachers. People like to hear good teaching. Teachers who spend more time on the lesson are more likely to report that they are four or five star teachers.

This demonstrates that there is more than one way to slice the pie. You can get there through great teaching, or you can get there through spending lots of time with your students.

My pastor and my former pastor are a good illustration of this. My current pastor, Dr. Maurice Hollingsworth is one of the finest pastors I know. He spends LOTS of time "with them." He really love us like a mother or a father would. There are a thousand people who are more active at First Baptist than I am. (We spend about 40 weekends on the road.) But when my dad had triple by pass surgery recently, Dr. Hollingsworth asked about my dad. I don't hear a lot of people going on and on about his preaching, but I have heard a lot of people say, "He sure is a caring pastor." He is a people person par excelance and the church is doing well.

My former pastor was the opposite kind of pastor. (Have you ever noticed how churches will tend to hire opposite kind of pastors, one after another?) He was not much on hospital visitation. I think he did some, but you had to be really sick. (I wouldn't want to be so sick that Dr. Z would come see me!) But, boy could he preach! Wow. He would knock it out of the park every time. And, the church did well.

You can grow a class on either strong teaching skills or strong people skills. Lucky the man or woman who has both. If you are bad enough at either one you are going to struggle. A rule of thumb is to shore up your weakness--make sure you are at least half way decent at both. Then, lean into your strengths. Strengths research suggests people do better by leaning into their strengths than fixing their weaknesses.

#2 Purpose of the group: is it mostly about growing members spiritually, or reaching out to outsiders?

Groups that saw their purpose as more about reaching to outsiders than growing spiritually were 53% more likely to be growing than those who saw their purpose primarily about growing spiritually.

This raises an interesting question. Can you grow spiritually without a deep interest in the lost? Does a deep interest in reaching the lost tend to enhance spiritual growth, or distract from it?

There is a tendency to make false dichotomies where no tension exists. Truth is, you can't grow close to God without caring about what He cares about--the lost.

Here is a Bible trivia question for you--what is the context of this phrase: "Low, I am with you always." That is a familiar phrase quoted from the AV. Do you remember where it is found? What is the context?

I have heard jokes around the idea that this is an admonition to drive, not fly. LOW I am with you always. It doesn't say anything about 30,000 feet.

Do you remember, yet? What is the context? It is the Great Commission. Jesus taught that as we engage on mission with God in the task of advancing the kingdom, pushing back the darkness, we are going to know a closeness to God that no Bible study has ever produced. (Please don't hear me say I am anti-Bible study; I think I have a life that proves otherwise.)

Many have experienced this in the context of a mission trip. There was something that happened on that mission trip that went quite beyond the excitement of jet travel. God was there. As we engage on mission with God in fulfilling the Great Commission, God with us in a special way.

It is one of the many things I love about speaking and writing and serving the Lord. I feel close to God when I serve. You will too. Many of you have.

This is what is wrong with the sit and soak group. A group that wants to just get closer and closer to God and doesn't care one whit about bringing others close to God can't get close to God themselves. God on on mission. Henry Blackaby taught us that if you want to get near to God you must join God in what God is doing. God is moving. If you want to stay near to God, you must stay moving.

A group that is on mission with God in growing and reaching is not only more effective growing and reaching, they are also more effective at getting people closer to God.

#3 Teaching ability

Teachers that are self-described as 4 or 5 star teachers are 68% more likely to report they are growing than those who are self-described as 1 or 2 star teachers.

I don't know about you, but this is one thing that is not a surprise to me. I would have predicted that the better teaching, the more likely the growth.

Five star teachers -- 48% growing
Four star teachers -- 47% growing
Three star teachers -- 37% growing
Two star teachers -- 35% growing
One star teachers -- 6% growing

This puts to rest another myth you sometimes hear: "We are not growing; I just concentrate on quality teaching." Maybe. But the likelihood is the opposite. The better the teaching, the more likely the growth. The less growth, the more likely the teaching is not all that good either.

#4 Visitation

Regular participation in visitation was a strong positive predictor of growth. Teachers who regularly participate in visitation are 78% more likely to be growing compared with those who never or almost never participate.

It is not quite as strong a predictor of growth as having lots or parties, but that is next week's topic. Next week we will talk about the four things that REALLY matter in predicting the growth of a group.

What makes groups grow, part 1

2010-09-17T09:12:00.001-06:00

Note: this article is one of six articles that eventually grew into a book: Make Your Group Grow. Available here: www.youcandouble.com

I have just completed three months of asking 1031 teachers thirteen questions designed to help us understand what makes groups grow. This article is the first in series that summarize my findings. (Note: this is not a scientifically randomized survey, but rather a survey of group leaders that I filled out surveys online and at conferences.)

Before I begin, allow me to say something. (I have always found that line humorous, but you kind of have to think about it.) I don't like some of the answers I found in this survey. I have taught the exact opposite of what this survey reveals at some points. I disagree with some of these findings. But, the facts are the facts and I am going to report them just as they are. If you disagree with the findings, please don't shoot me, I am only the messenger.

I asked thirteen questions. The first one was

1. Would you describe your class as. . .
declining
stable
growing
growing rapidly

This question was used as a point of comparison with all the rest. For example, the next question (which was really four questions) read

2. How would you rate your strength in the following areas on a one to five scale:
Teaching ability
People skills
Spiritual vibrancy
Organizational skill

In each case, I divided the responses into two groups: the high and the low. If there were five possible answers, I threw out the middle ones and just compared the top group with the bottom group. I wanted to see as much contrast as possible.

The question, then, becomes, "Are 4 and 5 star teachers any more likely to report they are growing than are 1 and 2 star teachers?" What would you guess?

I then divided my findings into four groups:

Things that didn't matter hardly at all. (Less than 10% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top group)
Things that only mattered a little. (Between 11% and 100% difference likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that mattered a lot. (If you are in the top group in these factors you are twice as likely--or more--to be growing than if you are in the bottom group. Between 101% and 1000% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that matter most. (If this is true of you, you are almost 11 times more likely to be growing than if it is not. More than 1000% difference in likelihood of growth between the top group and the bottom group.)

Here are the twelve predictors of growth sorted in the order of how much difference they make in predicting growth.

Things that didn't matter much

#1 Outsiders or insiders?

I asked how teachers spent their time--on people inside the class or outside. I would have predicted that spending more time on people outside the class was a significant predictor of whether the class was growing. Turns out, I was wrong. Teachers who spend more time on people outside the class than people inside the class were 4% LESS likely to be growing their class.

My take on that is this. If you ignore the people in your class, your class won't grow, no matter how much time you spend trying to get outsiders to join it.

I drilled a little deeper and found something else interesting. I compared those who were on the extremes in this category--those who were reporting spending 80% or more of their time with the class vs. those who were reporting 80% or more with people outside the class. Those who were spending 80% or more of their time on outsiders were 12% more likely to be growing than those who were spending 80% of their time or more with people inside. Still, not a huge difference.

Balance in all things. Jesus taught us to walk the narrow way. We need to minister to outsiders as well as insiders.

#2 Embrace the vision of growing and dividing

This was a real shocker to me. Here is the question:

10. How does your group feel about the idea of growing and dividing your group?
___ Openly embrace the vision of growing and dividing
___ Ambivalent about growing and dividing
___ Mildly opposed to the vision of growing and dividing
___ Strongly opposed to the idea of dividing our group

I taught for several years that if we are going to see a doubling group movement in our county, the groups themselves must embrace the vision of growing and dividing. A group of ten that doubles every eighteen months can reach a thousand people in ten years. Why isn't it happening? We don't want it to happen. The group must embrace the vision.

Not so. There was almost no difference (2%) in the likelihood of growth between those in the top and those in the bottom of this scale. How do you explain this?

Here is my explanation. Imagine you are rocking along, teaching a class, but not pushing them to grow and divide. How aware are you that the group is opposed to the vision of growing and dividing? How likely are you to report that your group is strongly opposed to the vision of growing and dividing? Not so much, right?

Now, suppose you get bitten by the group multiplication bug. You start actively talking to your group about growing and dividing. What kind of response do you expect to get? How aware are you now of the group's resistance to the vision? How likely are you to report that your group is strongly opposed to the vision of growing and dividing? Very likely.

The more the teacher has embraced the vision of growing and dividing, the more likely he or she is to be aware of the group's resistance.

Eventually, as the teacher succeeds in growing and dividing the group more people get on board with the vision.

In short, if a group has embraced the vision it is more likely to be growing. But, the more the vision is cast, the more aware the teacher is of the resistance. These factors offset each other.

The lesson is this: if you want to grow and divide your group, you don't have to wait around for your group to get the vision. Growing groups do not grow and divide because their group has embraced the vision. Sometimes they have embraced the vision and sometimes they have not.

#3 Organizational skill

This is the third thing in the "hardly matters at all" category. Teachers who report high organizational ability are only 7% more likely to be growing than those who report low organizational skill.

Next week, we will look at things that matter.

How to Stimulate Better Discussions.

2010-09-16T17:35:00.000-06:00

Guest article by Mark Howell

http://www.markhowelllive.com

Reminder: Two of my core assumptions are (1) if I want to make it possible for everyone to be part of a group, I need to lower the bar for leaders (and raise the bar for coaches and coaching) and (2) part of lowering the bar for leaders is that I need to provide material that almost leads itself. That said, here is how I train leaders to stimulate better discussions.

Five Keys to Stimulating Better Discussions

First, think ahead of time about where your members need to go… You don’t need to spend a lot of time on this, but it does help to think about the individual needs of your members as you’re looking over the upcoming session. Although this is a challenge in a newer group, it gets easier the longer a group has been together and the more you know about your members. One way you can speed up the process is to have each of your members take the Purpose Driven Health Assessment and develop a Health Plan.

…and tailor the standard-issue questions in your upcoming session to fit the needs of your group. Not as hard to do as it might seem. Often it’s simply a matter of being aware of the needs of your members.

Second, learn to use guiding statements to keep the session headed in the right direction. Guiding statements are simple modifications that can be dropped in right after the question. For example:

“Let’s each take 30 seconds to respond to this question.”
“What one word summarizes your feelings.”
“What does this verse say to you? Boil your response down to one sentence.”
“This is a good warm-up question. How about 2 of you giving us your answer.”

Third, rephrase the question and ask it again. If the discussion drifts off topic, it can be redirected by rephrasing and taking a second pass.

Fourth, use redirecting statements as necessary. You may feel a little awkward, but your members will appreciate your help keeping things on topic. For example:

“That sounds like something we should discuss another time.”
“Let’s keep working on this question. We may have time for that one later.”

Fiftth, recognize and celebrate each baby step along the way. Affirm your members when they take a risk or make progress on the steps they need to take. For example:

“That’s great! Thank you for sharing that.”
“That is a really important step to share your feelings with the group!”
“We’ve taken some steps as a group tonight. I think all of us have acknowledged that we need to have a regular quiet time and we’re ready to give it a try.”

Sticky Teaching, Part 8

2010-01-27T20:34:00.003-07:00

Jesus taught we are changed more by what we say than what we hear:

He went on: "What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean.' Mark 7:20 (NIV)

That is why the Bible makes such a big deal about what we confess.

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. Romans 10:9-10 (NIV)

It is not enough to believe. We must confess. The implication is we don't really believe it until we say it. We are changed more by what we say than what we hear.

This is why Jesus asked Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" It is not like Jesus did not know. He knew that when Peter said, "You are the Christ" he would believe--really believe--and be changed by that message.

This is why I believe so profoundly about the importance of Good Questions as a means of teaching adults. Not that Good Questions are the only way to teach. We need sermons as well. But, we get that in the worship service. We don't need another one of those. If we do need another sermon, John Ortberg will probably do a better job than you or I. What people need is a conversation. They need the opportunity to process. They need the opportunity to confess. They need the opportunity to speak the truth and be changed by it. Good Questions do that.

Here are some of the kinds of questions that are included in Good Questions that Have Groups Talking.

I actually have a whole book on this. It is a FREE 160 page e-book called Good Questions Have Groups Talking. www.joshhunt.com/good.pdf

The Life Exposure Question

Example: State your name and one strength you have as a teacher.

What Does the Text say?

Example: According to Acts 18:25 what three qualities make up great teaching?

Acts 18:25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately.

What does the Text mean?

Example: Does anyone know what is meant by the term, “perdition”?

“How Did They Feel? ” Questions

Example: How did the prodigal son feel as he approached the father near the end of the story?

Jump ball Questions

Example: Is Christian living easy or hard?

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:29-30

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. Acts 14:22

“Where are you at?” Questions

Example: How often does the average believer share their faith?

Application Questions

Example: How can we apply this to our lives specifically this week?

“What is in it for me?” Questions

Example: What are the advantages for you of having a daily quiet time?

“What will it cost me if I don’t?” Questions

Example: What might it cost you if you don’t treasure your wife?

Testimony Questions

Example: How did you discover your spiritual gift?

How Has It Worked So Far?

Example: Tell me about how you learned to have a consistent quiet time?

Decision Question

Example: Would you join me in recommitting your life to Christ and to being obedient to the command of God to rejoice in the Lord always.

Accountability Questions

Example: How were you able to apply what we talked about last week?

Those are just some of the questions you can use. You can likely think of more, better ones. However you get there, lead your people to confess the truth and be changed by it.

We learn more from what we say than what we hear.

That is why, I have one more suggestion for you.

Before I make this suggestion, let me ask you a question. Have you enjoyed these articles? Have you been motivated to buy the book? Did you enjoy that? Do you really want to learn to be a sticky teacher?

Here is the suggestion: teach this material. That is right, teach it. Gather a group of like-minded teachers together and teach this material. Why? You learn more from what you say than from what you hear.

Sticky lessons part 7

2010-01-08T12:46:00.002-07:00

All Jesus did that day was tell stories—a long storytelling afternoon. Matthew 13:34 (MSG)

Jesus always used stories and illustrations like these when speaking to the crowds. In fact, he never spoke to them without using such parables. Matthew 13:34 (NLT)

Again Jesus used stories as illustrations when he spoke to them. He said, Matthew 22:1 (GW)

Where to find good stories

I try to spend about half the time I spend in preparation in formal preparation--reading commentaries and what not. The other half I try to spend in reading trade books. I try to read story-rich authors--people like John Ortberg, John Maxwell and John Ortberg. Did I mention John Ortberg? I really like him.

I used to listen to a lot of cassettes, back in the day. Then, CDs, now podcasts. Great thing about podcasts: they are free! Who doesn't like free? I have listened to every sermon John Ortberg and Andy Stanley have preached in the last five years. All free, delivered to my IPOD.

If you are not familiar with Podcasts, here is the short course. Go to www.itunes.com Download ITunes. Go to the store. Don't let the word store freak you out, you are not going to buy anything. Keep your credit card in your wallet.

Search for John Ortberg. Click on the podcast tab. Click subscribe. That is it. You are done.

Of course, it really helps to have some kind of portable listening device like an IPOD. Then, every time you plug it in, it automatically goes out and gets the latest sermons. It deletes the ones you have listened to and adds the new ones. As you might guess, all these settings are customizable, but this is the short course.

You are going to hear some great stories you are going to want to use in your group. How do you find them?

Google.

Ever hear the funny story about this preacher who mixed up every story in the Bible into one hilarious combobulated combination of a story? Toward the end it says, "Chunk her down, boys, chunk her down!"

Google this (include the quotations marks; that means, "this phrase exactly"): "chunk her down."

I did it just now and the number one listing was this one:

An older preacher told the story of a young minister interviewing for his first pastorate. The Pulpit Committee had invited him to come over to their church for the interview. The committee chairman asked, "Son, do you know the Bible pretty good?"

The young minister said, "Yes, pretty good." The chairman asked, "Which part do you know best?" He responded saying, "I know the New Testament best." "Which part of the New Testament do you know best," asked the chairman. The young minister said, "Several parts." The chairman said, "Well, why don't you tell us the story of the Prodigal Son." The young man said, "Fine."

"There was a man of the Pharisees name Nicodemus, who went down to Jericho by night and he fell upon stony ground and the thorns choked him half to death.

"The next morning Solomon and his wife, Gomorrah, came by, and carried him down to the ark for Moses to take care of. But, as he was going through the Eastern Gate into the Ark, he caught his hair in a limb and he hung there forty days and forty nights and he afterwards did hunger. And, the ravens came and fed him.

"The next day, the three wise men came and carried him down to the boat dock and he caught a ship to Ninevah. And when he got there he found Delilah sitting on the wall. He said, "Chunk her down, boys, chunk her down." And, they said, "How many times shall we chunk her down, till seven time seven?" And he said, "Nay, but seventy times seven." And they chucked her down four hundred and ninety times.

"And, she burst asunder in their midst. And they picked up twelve baskets of the leftovers. And, in the resurrection whose wife shall she be?"

The Committee chairman suddenly interrupted the young minister and said to the remainder of the committee, "Fellows, I think we ought to ask the church to call him as our minister.

He is awfully young, but he sure does know his Bible." http://jokes.christiansunite.com/Bible/The_New_Pastor.shtml

What a time to be alive! What a time to be a teacher! Every story you have ever heard indexed for you and available free, any time day or night! WOW!

Good Stories and Good Questions

Even though this is true, this is, perhaps, the most time consuming part of my preparation. I read though lots of stories to give my subscribers the best of stories that they can use in their lessons. If you would like your lessons to really come alive, you can do so for $4 a month. ($200 for all the teachers in your church for a whole year!) Every lesson has 20 or so questions, quotes from great commentaries, and great stories that make your lesson come alive.

For more on lessons, see www.joshhunt.com

There you have it: six marks of sticky communication:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories

I'd like to add one more. And, happily, it fits the acrostic:

Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories
Say Something

Say something: get people to confess the truth. We are changed more by what we say than by what we hear. That is the topic of next week's article.

May I recommend some literature? (not my own)

2009-12-22T12:31:00.001-07:00

I have said it before, I will say it again: I think Lifeway's Masterworks series is the best of the best. And, next quarter, it is the best of the best of the best.

All literature published by any publisher struggles with the same problem: how do you find someone who can write something brilliant about the topic or text? Turns out, this is a very difficult task to do consistently.

Masterworks has solved this problem in the following way. They don't try to find someone to write something brilliant. They find something that has already been written that is brilliant. The Masterworks lesson supplement I wrote today was on Beth Moore's book on Daniel. One could argue that Beth Moore is a brilliant writer. I'd agree. If she is writing the curriculum, how bad could it be?

Masterworks gets this class of writers to write the literature every quarter. They take best selling Christian trade books and turn them into literature. It costs a little more, but it is great stuff!

(OK, I can't resist. Here is my little plug for my lessons: I try to solve this same problem of being brilliant another way. I quote best-selling authors and commentators in the lessons I write. These lessons correspond with Lifeway's outlines and can be used stand-alone or supplemental to Lifeway's outlines. Notes come from people like John MacArthur, Warren Wiersbe, Henry Blackaby, Tony Evans and John Piper.)

Speaking of Piper. John Piper's book Desiring God is arguably the single most influential book I have read in my entire life. And next quarter it will be featured in Masterworks. If I were a Minister of Education today, I would try to get all my teachers in Masterworks next quarter just to study this life-changing book.

Why is this Desiring God so great? Let me allow Piper to speak for himself:

When I was in college, I had a vague, pervasive notion that if I did something good because it would make me happy, I would ruin its goodness.

I figured that the goodness of my moral action was lessened to the degree that I was motivated by a desire for my own pleasure. At the time, buying ice cream in the student center just for pleasure didn't bother me, because the moral consequences of that action seemed so insignificant. But to be motivated by a desire for happiness or pleasure when I volunteered for Christian service or went to church—that seemed selfish, utilitarian, mercenary.

This was a problem for me because I couldn't formulate an alternative motive that worked. I found in myself an overwhelming longing to be happy, a tremendously powerful impulse to seek pleasure, yet at every point of moral decision I said to myself that this impulse should have no influence.

One of the most frustrating areas was that of worship and praise. My vague notion that the higher the activity, the less there must be of self-interest in it caused me to think of worship almost solely in terms of duty. And that cuts the heart out of it.

Then I was converted to Christian Hedonism. In a matter of weeks I came to see that it is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in Him. (Don't miss those last two words: in Him. Not His gifts, but Him. Not ourselves, but Him.) Let me describe the series of insights that made me a Christian Hedonist. Along the way, I hope it will become clear what I mean by this strange phrase.

1. During my first quarter in seminary, I was introduced to the argument for Christian Hedonism and one of its great exponents, Blaise Pascal. He wrote:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

This statement so fit with my own deep longings, and all that I had ever seen in others, that I accepted it and have never found any reason to doubt it. What struck me especially was that Pascal was not making any moral judgment about this fact. As far as he was concerned, seeking one's own happiness is not a sin; it is a simple given in human nature. It is a law of the human heart, as gravity is a law of nature.

This thought made great sense to me and opened the way for the second discovery.

2. I had grown to love the works of C. S. Lewis in college. But not until later did I buy the sermon called "The Weight of Glory." The first page of that sermon is one of the most influential pages of literature I have ever read. It goes like this:

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.[2]

There it was in black and white, and to my mind it was totally compelling: It is not a bad thing to desire our own good. In fact, the great problem of human beings is that they are far too easily pleased. They don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that they should. And so they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.

I had never in my whole life heard any Christian, let alone a Christian of Lewis's stature, say that all of us not only seek (as Pascal said), but also ought to seek, our own happiness. Our mistake lies not in the intensity of our desire for happiness, but in the weakness of it.

3. The third insight was there in Lewis's sermon, but Pascal made it more explicit. He goes on to say:

There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

As I look back on it now, it seems so patently obvious that I don't know how I could have missed it. All those years I had been trying to suppress my tremendous longing for happiness so I could honestly praise God out of some "higher," less selfish motive. But now it started to dawn on me that this persistent and undeniable yearning for happiness was not to be suppressed, but to be glutted—on God! The growing conviction that praise should be motivated solely by the happiness we find in God seemed less and less strange.

4. The next insight came again from C. S. Lewis, but this time from his Reflections on the Psalms. Chapter 9 of Lewis's book bears the modest title "A Word about Praise." In my experience it has been the word about praise—the best word on the nature of praise I have ever read.

Lewis says that as he was beginning to believe in God, a great stumbling block was the presence of demands scattered through the Psalms that he should praise God. He did not see the point in all this; besides, it seemed to picture God as craving "for our worship like a vain woman who wants compliments." He goes on to show why he was wrong:

But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game…

My whole, more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.[4]

This was the capstone of my emerging Hedonism. Praising God, the highest calling of humanity and our eternal vocation, did not involve the renunciation, but rather the consummation of the joy I so desired. My old effort to achieve worship with no self-interest in it proved to be a contradiction in terms. God is not worshiped where He is not treasured and enjoyed. Praise is not an alternative to joy, but the expression of joy. Not to enjoy God is to dishonor Him. To say to Him that something else satisfies you more is the opposite of worship. It is sacrilege.

I saw this not only in C. S. Lewis, but also in the eighteenth-century pastor Jonathan Edwards. No one had ever taught me that God is glorified by our joy in Him. That joy in God is the very thing that makes praise an honor to God, and not hypocrisy. But Edwards said it so clearly and powerfully:

God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways: 1. By appearing to...their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself.... God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it.... He that testifies his idea of God's glory [doesn't] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it.

This was a stunning discovery for me. I must pursue joy in God if I am to glorify Him as the surpassingly valuable Reality in the universe. Joy is not a mere option alongside worship. It is an essential component of worship.

We have a name for those who try to praise when they have no pleasure in the object. We call them hypocrites. This fact—that praise means consummate pleasure and that the highest end of man is to drink deeply of this pleasure—was perhaps the most liberating discovery I ever made.

5. Then I turned to the Psalms for myself and found the language of Hedonism everywhere. The quest for pleasure was not even optional, but commanded: "Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4).

The psalmists sought to do just this: "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Psalm 42:1-2). "My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). The motif of thirsting has its satisfying counterpart when the psalmist says that men "drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; and You give them to drink of the river of Your delights" (Psalm 36:8, NASB).

I found that the goodness of God, the very foundation of worship, is not a thing you pay your respects to out of some kind of disinterested reverence. No, it is something to be enjoyed: "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" (Psalm 34:8). "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103).

As C. S. Lewis says, God in the Psalms is the "all-satisfying Object." His people adore Him unashamedly for the "exceeding joy" they find in Him (Psalm 43:4). He is the source of complete and unending pleasure: "In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11).

That is the short story of how I became a Christian Hedonist. I have now been brooding over these things for some thirty-five years, and there has emerged a philosophy that touches virtually every area of my life. I believe that it is biblical, that it fulfills the deepest longings of my heart, and that it honors the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have written this book to commend these things to all who will listen.

Many objections rise in people's minds when they hear me talk this way. I hope the book will answer the most serious problems. But perhaps I can defuse some of the resistance in advance by making a few brief, clarifying comments.

First, Christian Hedonism as I use the term does not mean God becomes a means to help us get worldly pleasures. The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God Himself. He is the end of our search, not the means to some further end. Our exceeding joy is He, the Lord—not the streets of gold or the reunion with relatives or any blessing of heaven. Christian Hedonism does not reduce God to a key that unlocks a treasure chest of gold and silver. Rather, it seeks to transform the heart so that "the Almighty will be your gold and your precious silver" (Job 22:25).

Second, Christian Hedonism does not make a god out of pleasure. It says that one has already made a god out of whatever he finds most pleasure in. The goal of Christian Hedonism is to find most pleasure in the one and only God and thus avoid the sin of covetousness, that is, idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

Third, Christian Hedonism does not put us above God when we seek Him out of self-interest. A patient is not greater than his physician. I will say more about this in chapter 3.

Fourth, Christian Hedonism is not a "general theory of moral justification." In other words, nowhere do I say: An act is right because it brings pleasure. My aim is not to decide what is right by using joy as a moral criterion. My aim is to own up to the amazing, and largely neglected, fact that some dimension of joy is a moral duty in all true worship and all virtuous acts. I do not, say that loving God is good because it brings joy. I say that God commands that we find joy in loving God: "Delight yourself in the Lord" (Psalm 37:4). I do not say that loving people is good because it brings joy. I say that God commands that we find joy in loving people: "[Let] the one who does acts of mercy [do so] with cheerfulness" (Romans 12:8).

I do not come to the Bible with a hedonistic theory of moral justification. On the contrary, I find in the Bible a divine command to be a pleasure-seeker—that is, to forsake the two-bit, low-yield, short-term, never-satisfying, person-destroying, God-belittling pleasures of the world and to sell everything "with joy" (Matthew 13:44) in order to have the kingdom of heaven and thus "enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:21, 23). In short, I am a Christian Hedonist not for any philosophical or theoretical reason, but because God commands it (though He doesn't command that you use these labels!)."

Fifth, I do not say that the relationship between love and happiness is this: "True happiness requires love." This is an oversimplification that misses the crucial and defining point. The distinguishing feature of Christian Hedonism is not that pleasure seeking demands virtue, but that virtue consists essentially, though not only, in pleasure seeking.

The reason I come to this conclusion is that I am operating here not as a philosophical hedonist, but as a biblical theologian and pastor who must come to terms with divine commands:

to "love mercy," not just do it (Micah 6:8, KJV), to do "acts of mercy, with cheerfulness" (Romans 12:8), to "joyfully" suffer loss in the service of prisoners (Hebrews 10:34), to be a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7), to make our joy the joy of others (2 Corinthians 2:3), to tend the flock of God willingly and "eagerly" (1 Peter 5:2), and to keep watch over souls "with joy" (Hebrews 13:17). When you reflect long and hard on such amazing commands, the moral implications are stunning. Christian Hedonism attempts to take these divine commands with blood-earnestness. The upshot is piercing and radically life changing: The pursuit of true virtue includes the pursuit of the joy because joy is an essential component of true virtue. This is vastly different from saying, "Let's all be good because it will make us happy."

Sixth, Christian Hedonism is not a distortion of historic Reformed catechisms of faith. This was one of the criticisms of Richard Mouw in his book, The God Who Commands:

Piper might be able to alter the first answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism—so that glorifying and enjoying God becomes glorifying by enjoying the deity—to suit his hedonistic purposes, but it is a little more difficult to alter the opening lines of the Heidelberg Catechism: That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

The remarkable thing about the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism is not that I can't change it for hedonistic purposes, but that I don't have to. It already places the entire catechism under the human longing for "comfort." Question one: "What is your only comfort in life and death?" The pressing question for critics of Christian Hedonism is: Why did the original framers of the four-hundred-year-old catechism structure all 129 questions so that they are an exposition of the question "What is my only comfort?"

Even more remarkable is to see the concern with "happiness" emerge explicidy in the second question of the catechism, which provides the outlines for the rest of the catechism. The second question is: "How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou in this comfort (Troste) mayest live and die happily (seliglich)?" Thus, the entire catechism is an answer to the concern for how to live and die happily.

The answer to the second question of the catechism is: "Three things: first, the greatness of my sin and misery; second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption." Then the rest of the catechism is divided into three sections to deal with these three things: "The First Part: Of Man's Misery" (questions 3-11); "The Second Part: Of Man's Redemption" (questions 12-85); and "The Third Part: Of Thankfulness" (questions 86-129). What this means is that the entire Heidelberg Catechism is written to answer the question "What must I know to live happily?"

I am puzzled that anyone would think that Christian Hedonism needs to "alter the opening lines to the Heidelberg Catechism." The fact is, the entire catechism is structured the way Christian Hedonism would structure it. Therefore, Christian Hedonism does not distort the historic Reformed catechisms. Both the Westminster Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism begin with a concern for man's enjoyment of God, or his quest to "live and die happily." I have no desire to be doctrinally novel. I am glad that the Heidelberg Catechism was written four hundred years ago.

Toward a Definition of Christian Hedonism

Fresh ways of looking at the world (even when they are centuries old) do not lend themselves to simple definitions. A whole book is needed so people can begin to catch on. Quick and superficial judgments will almost certainly be wrong. Beware of conjecture about what lies in the pages of this book! The surmise that here we have another spin-off from modern man's enslavement to the centrality of himself will be very wide of the mark. Ah, what surprises lie ahead!

For many, the term Christian Hedonism will be new. Therefore, I have included appendix 5: "Why Call It Christian Hedonism?" If this is a strange or troubling term, you may want to read those pages before plunging into the main chapters.

I would prefer to reserve a definition of Christian Hedonism until the end of the book, when misunderstandings would have been swept away. A writer often wishes his first sentence could be read in light of his last—and vice versa! But, alas, one must begin somewhere. So I offer the following advance definition in hope that it will be interpreted sympathetically in light of the rest of the book.

Christian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:

The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love. To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is: The chief end of man is to glorify God

by

enjoying Him forever.

--Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

Sticky lessons part 6

2009-12-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

I wrote a lesson on Psalm 73 recently:

Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold. Psalms 73:1-2 (NIV)

Here is my paraphrase:

I know God is good. . . in theory. But, my life pretty much stinks right now. Why doesn't God do something for me. . . NOW!

I used this story from Warren Wiersbe's commentary:

It was brought home to me when our first child was born. In the hospital God took that child. I only heard the cry of that little one. All she ever did in her life was cry. I shall never forget the day she died. Across the hall from where my wife was, there was a very wealthy couple who had a baby boy, and their rich friends came to celebrate with them. As I drove into the parking lot in my old beat-up Chevrolet, they all drove up in Cadillacs. They went into the hospital with their champagne and celebrated the birth of the little boy. He was a precious looking little baby -- all they desired, I guess. I shall never forget that night. It was summertime, and I went out on a balcony that was there and cried out to God. To be honest with you, I don't know to this good day why God took our baby and left the baby across the hall. They have money, and, boy, they live it up! I have seen write-ups about them, and they have been in trouble several times. Their little boy is now an adult, as my daughter would be. After all these years, I still don't have the answer. You may be thinking, You are a minister, and you don't have the answer? No, I don't have the answer. Then how can you comfort others? Well, I'll tell you how. Although I don't have the answer, I know the One who does, and He has told me to walk with him by faith. He tests me by putting me in the dark. Then I'll reach out my hand and take his. In His Word He tells me that I can trust Him. Someday He will explain the whys of life to me. -- Thru The Bible with J. Vernon McGee.

If that doesn't move you, try watching this video

http://www.ignitermedia.com/products/IV/singles/570/99-Balloons

I am still waiting for a sermon that fits with that video. WOW.

Sticky teaching does that. It moves people emotionally.

Think about the times when you have been moved greatly by God. Did logic do the trick? Were you changed by mere information? Or, did emotion play a role?

Think about a really great teaching you have heard. Was it mere facts, or did the speaker pull on your heart strings?

Heath and Heath (Made to Stick) and Emotions.

I found some great examples of moving people emotionally on Heath and Heath's web page. Check these out:

Bill Gates releases a jar full of mosquitoes

In his talk at TED, Bill Gates released a jar full of mosquitoes, sending them out to feast on some of the world’s best & brightest blood. “Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,” he said. “I brought some. Here, I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.” He then waited a few minutes before reassuring the crowd that the mosquitoes were malaria-free.

A bit mean, maybe, but at least he broke through to people’s emotions.

Ben of Ben and Jerry's

You may agree or disagree with their position, but you can't disagree that this is sticky communication. http://www.truemajority.org/bensbbs/

Emotions and video

One of the best ways to move people emotionally is through the use of video. I include links to appropriate videos in my lessons from time to time under the creative element section. Here are a feew of the sites I turn to:

http://www.ignitermedia.com

http://www.sermonspice.com/

http://www.wingclips.com/

http://www.wordsearchmedia.com/

http://www.easyworship.com/minimovies/

Some of these are downloadable clips. They range in price from about $2 to 20. Wingclips references movies that you can rent and show. You can see the clip on their site, rent the DVD, or download it from their site. It is time consuming finding videos, but when you find a good one, it can really make a lessons.

Jesus and emotion

Jesus clearly moved people emotionally. So much so that the crucified him. So much so that people died for him.

It is not enough to teach what Jesus taught. We need to teach HOW Jesus taught. How do we do that? That is the subject of the next article.

Sticky Lessons, Part 5

2009-11-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

A constant theme of my teaching revolves around a few central ideas:

It is always in our best interest to live the Christian life.
It is good for us to follow God.
God is good. His ways are good. Following God is good. It is good for me. Always.
We must come to love the Christian life or we will never come to live the Christian life.

I wanted to emphasize this point in an introduction recently and said something like this:

"I picked up this book yesterday. . ."

Note: people are interested in what is current. They want to know what you learned recently. In your relationship with God, they want to know if God has said anything to you lately. They want to know what you are reading this week. They want to drink from a moving stream.

"It is written by pollster Frank Luntz and has commendations by both President Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House. It seems this is the man both parties go to when they want to know what America is thinking and feeling"

I wanted to establish Frank Luntz as a credible pollster that the top politicians on both sides of the isle turn to.

"In the section on religion, he said something that a lot of you already know: "In general, people who believe in God are happier, healthier, and more content compared to nonbelievers and nonpractitioners. They are more likely to be happily married and more likely to spend time with their children. They are more likely to do volunteer work and less likely to engage in anti-social activities. They are better adjusted and closer to family and friends. Every type of positive pathology that we believe is good for the human condition has a direct correlation with religions activity."

I read another paragraph or two. I didn't have to. I could have just said Jesus told us he promised an abundant Christian life so it must be true. What Heath and Heath (Make to Stick) taught me is that sometimes, it helps to establish credibility. Sometimes, if you want a lesson to stick, quoting the facts is far better that just saying, "my experience tells me." Quoting an authority is better than saying, "I have always thought. . ."

I have a new book coming out June 2010 called Make My Group Grow. It is basically a summary of the things I have learned and taught over the last ten years of training group leaders. But, it is built around research. I did an initial survey of 1000+ group leaders, asking them a number of questions about what they do and believe. The answers to these questions form the basis of the book. In truth, there were only a few real surprises coming out of the research. But, it is more powerful to say, "Groups that have lots of parties are twice as likely to grow compared to groups that don't party much."

I have always believed this. Now I have the facts. Facts are credible. Facts are our friends.

Jesus and credibility

Jesus was in a unique position in this regard because he was self-authenticating. He had that EF Hutton way of speaking and people would stop and listen.

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. Matthew 7:28-29 (NIV)

This is one area I don't think we can teach like Jesus because we are not Jesus. Jesus had a self-authenticating authority that did not need to be bolstered by quoting other sources. When you are God, who do you quote? I don't think Jesus ever said, "As Rabbi So-and-so says. . ."

But, we are not God, and we do well to quote the best sources we can. The best sources are the sources your listeners respect. If you want to reach a secular audience, quote from secular sources from time to time, as I did above.

Quote current sources. Too many illustrations and source material is off the farm 100 years ago. My friend Jim Wilson can help you with this. See http://www.freshsermonillustrations.net/ I use his illustrations regularly via Wordsearch. www.wordsearchbible.com

Good Questions and credibility

Can I be honest with you? I don't follow every one of these principles perfectly as I write Good Questions. I am not always as shocking as I could be and I don't always suggest you bring something in that is concrete. But, in this regard, Good Questions That Have Groups Talking really shine.

About a year ago I bought about $3000 worth of WordSearch commentaries and other source material to really beef up Good Questions. I already had WordSearch's best package, plus a number add-on books. But a year ago, I invested in a major upgrade.

In addition to Good Questions, I now provide answers--in the form of quotes from some of the most credible sources available--commentators like John MacArthur, Warren Wiersbe and the Holman Commentary. Trade books by people like John Piper, R.C. Sproul and Henry Blackaby. Books of illustrations galore.

Curriculum's fundamental flaw

Nearly all curriculum has a fundamental flaw. They go at it this way. Smart people get in a room and decide what we are going to study. Then, they go out and try to find someone to write something brilliant about it. Turns out, this is a difficult job.

One notable exception to this is Lifeway's Masterworks Series. They go at it the other way. They ask, "Who has already written something brilliant?" They find books written by people like Beth Moore, Billy Graham and John Piper and turn them into curriculum. Brilliant.

I do a similar thing. I find people that have already written something brilliant and put those comments in the footnotes of my lessons. They really have written some brilliant things you can share with your group. I write four new lessons a week corresponding with three of Lifeway's outlines plus the International Standard Series. They can be used either stand-alone or supplemental to your existing literature. They are available on a subscription basis at only $200 a year for your whole church.

Not that you cannot do this yourself. It is pretty much pure research. Of course, you will need to invest in a substantial library and it will take quite a bit of time, but it can be done. If you want a cheaper and easier way, just subscribe to Good Questions. I'd be honored to serve you in this way.

Sticky Lessons, Part 4

2009-11-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

I did a sermon on the woman caught in adultery years ago. I told the first part of the story then said, "Just then, people starting running through the crowd passing out stones. Everyone knew what they were for. They were and instrument of death. There was about to be a stoning." Just as I said, "people started running through the crowds passing out stones" the youth group was cued to do just that. They jumped out and began passing out stones. When everyone had a stone, I asked, "Who would you hurt if you had the power to do so? God calls upon us to forgive. He calls us to set down our judgmentalism and forgive. I want to ask you to set down your stone and with it, your judgmentalism. Set down your slowness to forgive. Set down your stone and forgive."

If you would teach sticky lessons, if you would teach like Jesus taught, you need to do this kind of thing from time to time. You need to use stuff that you can touch and feel.

I say, "from time to time" because of the last principle--unexpected. If you do the unexpected every week before long people come to expect the unexpected. At that point it is almost impossible to be unexpected. There was a book on this ago titled, "All creativity makes a dull church."

I don't do it every week, but often in my lessons I will ask teachers to bring in something that you can touch and feel. I often ask teachers to email their students and ask the students to bring something to class. (For more information, see www.joshhunt.com click on the button that says "Lessons.")

Aesop's Fables

Heath and Heath, who wrote Made to Stick, on which I am basing this series of articles, site Aesop as an example of sticky writing. Aesop lived in the mid 6th century B.C. and his writings still stick around. That is what you call sticky writing. Consider some of his fables. What do all of these fables have in common?

The Tortoise and the Hare
The Fox and the Grapes
The Boy who Cried Wolf
The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs

All of these parables are about concrete ideas. They teach abstract notions--slow steady progress can overcome a burst of energy that fizzles--but they do it in very concrete ways. They use objects and animals and people and things that we can see and touch and smell.

If you would teach effectively, teach concretely. Use stuff that you can hold and smell and see and touch and smack against something.

Jesus and concrete teaching

I can't prove it and maybe I am wrong, but I think Jesus often held stuff when he taught. I think he held some wheat and let it slip slowly though his hands as he taught about the seeds. Perhaps he held up a light as he said, "You are the light of the world."

Jesus' best example of concrete teaching, however, is when performed what some have called an acted out parable. One example of this is when he was asleep on the boat. He calmed the waves and taught us how he can calm the storms in our lives. But, he didn't just talk about it, he calmed an actual storm.

When he fed the multitudes he was teaching a parable about his provision for us. He didn't just tell us he provides, he multiplied the loaves and the fishes.

When Jesus wanted to teach about the importance of fruit bearing, he didn't just talk--he cursed a fruitless fig tree. Theologians have written volumes on this, but the message is pretty clear if you see it as an acted out parable: bear fruit or else!

Jesus taught about the importance of servanthood. He told us that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. Then, he picked up a towel and a basin of water. What do you think taught more?

The ultimate example, or course, is the cross. It was the ultimate acted out parable. The Bible teaches us to look not only to our own interest, but also to the interest of others. Jesus lived in out on the cross. Jesus told us about how to handle persecution. He showed us on the cross. He talked to us about servanthood. He showed us on the cross.

Of course, the cross was more than a powerful teach tool. It was the means by which our sins could be forgiven. But, it was a powerful teaching tool and we can learn much from it. We can learn about Christian living, and we can learn about how to teach.

If you would teach and make the lesson stick, if you would teach as Jesus taught, teach concretely. I want to help you. I write four new Bible study lessons every week. I usually try to include some concrete elements. These lessons correspond with three of Lifeway's outlines, as well as the International Standard Series. They can be used by themselves or as supplements. I have likely written more lessons than any other person, living or dead. For details, see www.joshhunt.com

Sticky Lessons, Part 3

2009-11-11T10:34:00.001-07:00

Our brains are designed to see the unexpected, the unusual, the shocking. If you would teach sticky lessons, like Jesus did, teach with some shock value.

You don't have to read Jesus very long before you find an example of this in His teaching:

Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. ⁽²⁵⁾ In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet. ⁽²⁶⁾The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. ⁽²⁷⁾"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." ⁽²⁸⁾"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." ⁽²⁹⁾Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter." ⁽³⁰⁾She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Mark 7:24-30 (NIV)

This story is shocking in two ways. First, we expect Jesus to cast out the demon, which he eventually did. Didn't he cast out the demon right way in every other case? Second, He hints at calling her a dog. That doesn't sound too nice. As one of my kids would say, "That just doesn't sound too Jesu-cal to me. We might say Jesus-like, but his term is Jesu-cal.

Here is another one:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48 (NIV)

Notice, Jesus doesn't say to try hard to be good. He doesn't say to be better than average. He doesn't say to be a decent human being. He says to be perfect. Perfect by what standard? "As your heavenly Father is perfect." Shocking.

One more:

But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. ⁽⁴⁰⁾And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. ⁽⁴¹⁾If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. ⁽⁴²⁾Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. Matthew 5:39-42 (NIV)

And another:

He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ⁽¹²⁾so that, "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" Mark 4:11-12 (NIV)

Here is my paraphrase: "I am telling you the secret of the Kingdom. But, I am not telling those on the outside. If I did, they might understand and repent. Then I would have to forgive them. I don't want to do that." Is anyone shocked?

Jesus constantly shocked people with his teaching and so should we.

Is your average Sunday School class shocking?

Do I need to write this section, or do you already know what I am going to say?

Most Sunday School classes are all about yup-yup and are not shocking at all. My Facebook friend, Donald L. Hughes, editor of www.ChristianWritingToday.com said, "So much preaching in churches is like an old lady petting her cat, waiting for the reassuring meow."

We need to shock people like Jesus did.

Heath and Heath on shocking teaching

I am basing this series of articles on Heath and Heath's excellent book, Made to Stick. I have read it once and listened to it twice. It is great.

They provide an example that I can readily relate to: air safety announcements on airplanes. Next time you fly, look around when this announcement is given. See how many people are paying attention. Imagine it was your job to rivet people's attention to this message.

Heath and Heath offer one suggestion. On a flight from Dallas to San Diego, the flight attendant paraphrased the safety announcement this way:

If I could have your attention for a few minutes, we sure would love to point out those safety features. If you haven't been in an automobile since 1965, the proper way to fasten a seat belt is to slide the flat end into the buckle. To unfasten, lift up on the buckle and it will release.

As the song goes, there may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but there are only six ways to leave this aircraft: two forward exit doors, two over-the wing removable exits, and two aft exit doors. The location of each exit is clearly marked with signs overhead as well as red and white disco lights along the floor of the isle.

Made ya look!

People laughed. Some broke out in scattered applause. Everyone listened. Different is good. Unexpected causes us to pay attention and learn.

What if you really wanted people to listen, what would you do? Here is my idea. About every 10,000 hours of flight, I would stage a demonstration. On cue, I would have the pilot drop into a steep nose dive, perhaps combined with a sharp turn. Simultaneously, I would have all of those yellow rubber masks drop from the ceiling. From there, I would depend on word of mouth. I would fully expect all of those people to tell their stories to everyone they knew, who would likely tell their stories to everyone they knew. You wouldn't have do to this very often before everyone would know how they are supposed to put on those masks.

Shocking people in church

One of the best examples I have ever seen of this is a sermon I heard by Richard Hogue years ago. I don't remember many sermons preached while I was in Junior High, but I will never forget this one.

It was a dark and stormy night. . .the sermon was on the second coming. (It really was a dark and stormy night.) Right at that crescendo moment, all of the lights in the auditorium went off. I don't know if it was because the storm, or somebody turned them off. All I know is that suddenly we were all sitting in utter darkness. The amplification system no longer worked, but it didn't matter. You could have heard a pin drop. Richard Hogue waited for maybe 15 seconds. Then he broke the silence: "Ever thought about how quickly the end will come? Are you ready?"

WOW.

I try to include a creative element in every lesson I write. Not always as shocking as the example above, but something out of the ordinary. For more information, see www.joshhunt.com Click on the button that says "lessons."

A simpler way in Bible Study

Want a quick and easy way to shock people in your Bible Study group? You can do it in two words: I disagree. Those two words are guaranteed to shock people.

Suppose everyone is talking about serving the Lord and working hard for God. Just say, "I disagree; I don't think we are to work hard for Him at all. I think we are to let Christ live his life through us." (Galatians 2.20)

Suppose everyone has this yup-yup tone about once saved always saved. Say, "I disagree. 'If we disown him, he will disown us.' (2 Timothy 2.12) Whatever the doctrine of the security of the believers means it does not mean we can disown him and get away with it. 'If we disown him, he will disown us.'" Shocking. Unless, of course, you are Methodist. We have other verses to shock them.

There are a lot of other ways, or course. Richard King, Minister of Education at First Baptist Las Cruces was my Sunday School teacher for a time. I will never forget the day he staged a fight in class. He asked my wife to play along with him in creating a squabble that turned into a near yelling match. That got their attention.

Good teaching does that. It gets their attention. It is unexpected. It is shocking. It is Jesu-cal.

Sticky Lessons, Part 2

2009-11-10T14:51:00.001-07:00

"If you can't reduce it to a slogan, people will never remember it." -- Rick Warren

"Memorable is portable." -- Andy Stanley

Quick: what are two or three things your dad taught you? Here is my answer:

Many hands lighten the load.
We don't all do things alike.
New is not always better; it is just new.

Notice you don't find any paragraphs there. You don't find book chapters. You dont' find any long, complicated (deep?) ideas. What you find is what we always find when we ask what people remember: short, pithy, memorable, easy-to-pass-on statements.

Jesus was a master at this. Look at His longest and most famous sermon, easily the most important piece of prose ever written. It is full of these slogan-ish statements:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13 (NIV)
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Matthew 5:17 (NIV)
Love your enemies. and pray for those who persecute you, Matthew 5:44 (NIV)
Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. Matthew 6:1 (NIV)
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Matthew 6:14 (NIV)
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21 (NIV)
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Matthew 6:27 (NIV)
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. Matthew 7:1 (NIV)
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7 (NIV)

And, perhaps the most classic, the most quoted sentence of all time: "Do to others what you would have them do to you." Matthew 7.12

And, it wasn't just the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus constantly peppered his teaching with memorable, succinct, slogan-ish statements.

If you would teach so that people will hear and understand and remember and be changed by what they hear, teach like Jesus: include short, memorable statements.

Southwest Airlines, the Army, and Newspapers

Heath and Heath discuss this in the excellent book on which I am basing this series of articles. One example is Southwest Airlines. Their slogan, "THE low-cost airline" guides every decision they make at Southwest. Herb Kelleher said, "I can teach you the secret in running the airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low-cost airline." If thinking about serving meals on board or entering new, higher-cost airports the question always comes back to: will that help us to remain THE low-cost airline.

The Army uses this concept of simplicity as they give orders to troops. Here is a saying: no plan survives contact with the enemy. Because of this, the Army has developed what they called "Commander's Intent". It is a short, simple statement that tells everyone what the goal is. Things may not go as planned and they may have to improvise, but by understanding the Commander's Intent--take this hill, or, take out this installation, or whatever they know how to respond when things don't go as planned.

Newspaper writers are taught this in a concept called the inverted pyramid. The idea is to put the most important things first. If the article has to be cut, just lop off some off the end. Novels and short stories, in contrast, are written in the opposite way. The punch line comes at the end. Newspaper writers know why people read newspapers--they want to get the facts. By putting the essential facts up front, the reader gets the gist. If they want more information, they can keep reading. If they just read the headline, they will know something of the story. Newspaper writers are told to, "not bury the lead." Look at the first two lines of this article for an example of this.

A recent example

I am preaching these days out of the book on Nehemiah and am trying to follow this example. Overall the series is called, "Nehemiah's plan A for Success." Here are the ideas we have looked at so far:

Ache. Nehemiah had and aching heart and so should we. He moved toward the pain, not away from it. He gathered more information about his hurting city. To quote Bill Hybels, he was having a Popeye moment: "That is all I can stands, I can't stands no more!" (If you would like to see the Bill Hybels video, check out my Facebook page.)

Ask. Nehemiah asked in prayer and so should we. Nehemiah's prayer exemplifies something that is true of all Bible prayers: Bible prayers don't sound like Baptist prayers.

Aim. Nehemiah had a goal and should we. Nehemiah could state his goal in one sentence. He wanted to rebuild the all around Jerusalem.

Next week:

Assess. Nehemiah clearly did some planning and so should we.

Repeated Phrases in Good Questions

I am reminded that I could do a better job of this in the lessons I write. I often try to include a repeated phrase that is used in a series of questions. For example:

How does it benefit us to become people of faith and confidence?
What does lack of faith and confidence cost us?
What keeps you from having more faith and confidence?
How can we take steps to becoming full of more faith and confidence?

By the way, these four questions can be asked about nearly any topic and are based on a fundamental assumption that it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life. God is a rewarder. We will always be glad, in the long run, that we followed Him. I heard someone say the other day, "It is hard following God!" Yeah? Try not following God for a while, see how that works for you!

If there is one repeated phrase I would want my people to remember it is this: it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life.

It is not enough to teach what Jesus taught. We need to teach HOW Jesus taught. Jesus was a sticky teacher. We should be too. One of the characteristics of sticky teachers is they reduce the teaching to one Big Idea--one repeatable, slogan-ish statement.

Sticky Lessons, Part 1

2009-11-10T13:26:00.001-07:00

I start reading hundreds of books but rarely finish any of them. Occasionally I finish one. Once in a blue moon I read one twice. Reading a book three times is almost unheard of. I have just done it with two different books. I want to talk about one of them in this set of articles.

Modern science has taught us much about communication. A great deal of research has been done on what makes a message stick. One of the best books on the subject is Heath and Heath's Made to Stick. If you have ever seen a copy you might remember. The book is bright orange with a piece of duct tape stuck to it. The cover itself teaches one of the six principles contained inside.

As I read (then listened) to this incredible book, I was struck by two things:

This is exactly how Jesus taught
Every Bible Study lesson should include these 6 elements

It is not enough to teach what Jesus taught; we need to teach how Jesus taught.

Jesus perfectly illustrates all six of the what the best of modern science tells us goes into making a message sticky. Its like He knew! ;-) Today, we can understand and appreciate on a deeper level why people down through the ages consider Jesus to be the greatest teacher ever. And we have all the more insight into how we can teach sticky lessons as Jesus taught sticky lessons.

Jesus' message was sticky. It sticks. People remember what Jesus said. They quote him. People quote Jesus who do not even know they are quoting Jesus. He has impacted every corner of culture.

What are these six principles? We will look at them more in detail--and illustrate these in the life of Jesus, but here is an overview. (Note that it spells out the word SUCCES)

Simple.

Jesus taught in short, pithy, memorable slogans. The golden rule is one one example. Rick Warren says people don't remember paragraphs; people remember slogans. Jesus reduced many of the most profound truths down to memorable slogans. Simple is not simplistic. You don't have to be very smart to make things complicated. It takes a genius to make them simple. Jesus was a genius at simple, but profound communication.

I try to do this in my lessons-often including a repeated phrase to reduce the lessons to something that will be ringing in their ears when they walk out. (And, if it is really sticky, much later.) You would do well to include a simple, memorable, slogan-like summary of what you want to teach in every lesson.

Unexpected.

The brain is wired to notice what changes, what is different, what is new, what is unusual, what is out of the ordinary. This is the really amazing thing about Jesus' teaching. I have read the gospels hundreds of times and Jesus' message still shocks me. I still can't believe he said what he did to the Syrophoenician woman.

In contrast, a lot of Sunday School lessons are sadly predictable. They have this "yup-yup" tone about them. That is why people are yawning. It is not enough to teach what Jesus taught. We need to teach how Jesus taught.

My wife gets credit for this suggestion. I try to include something unexpected, something creative, something shocking in every lesson. You should too. Jesus was unexpected. We should be too.

Concrete.

I cant prove it, but I think Jesus held stuff a lot when he taught. I think he pointed to things. Like when he spoke about wheat I imagine him with some wheat in his hand. I can't prove that and it might not be true. But, I know this is true: he talked about lots of stuff that you can touch and feel. He used the physical to teach the invisible. We should too.

This is the part of my lessons that I struggle with the most, but it is perhaps most important to make a message sticky. Try to bring something into the classroom every week that you can touch and feel. Your people will remember what the hold and smell. The message will stick.

Credible.

This was one of the most shocking things about Jesus' teaching. "When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law." Matthew 7:28-29 (NIV)

Jesus teaching had its own authority. We don't have the authority of Jesus so we quote him, and the rest of the Bible, as our authority. We also do well to quote respected leaders. Sometimes, saying, "John MacArthur says" is better than, "I have always thought."

Here is a quote I used yesterday. I think you will agree it is much more powerful coming from John Piper: "The obstacle that keeps us from obeying the first (vertical) commandment is the same obstacle that keeps us from obeying the second (horizontal) commandment. It is not that we are all trying to please ourselves, but that we are all far too easily pleased." --Desiring God, John Piper. I try to include quotes like this in every lesson and you would do well to do the same.

Emotional.

My preaching professor in seminary used to often say, "People are very seldom moved by cold, hard logic" We change people when we move them emotionally. Jesus moved people emotionally. He made the angry and he made the cry. He made the puzzled and he shocked them. So should we. Emotional messages stick. I try to include great stories in every lesson to make the message emotional and thus sticky. You should too.

Story.

Jesus used illustrations to tell the crowds all these things. He did not tell them anything without illustrating it with a story. Matthew 13:34 (GW)

Great teachers use great stories. Great stories stick. Most of us can tell stories told to us in childhood. I work at including great stories in every lesson and you should too.

Over the next six articles we will be looking at these six principles and how we can include then in every lesson to be a more sticky teacher. Jesus used these principles and is the master teacher of all times. We will be illustrating these principles from the life of Jesus.

It is not enough to teach what Jesus taught; we need to teach how Jesus taught.

Why Good Questions are Different

2009-10-23T10:38:00.003-06:00

Good Questions that have groups talking are different from most lessons you have seen. Here are a few reasons why.

Discussion based rather than lecture based

Our tag line is, "Good questions have groups talking" and that is the goal of every lesson. Look at one of the sample lessons and you can see this difference right away. Put these lessons into the hands of all your teachers and watch your classes transform from lecture-based groups to discussion based groups. Each lesson consists of 20 or so ready-to-use questions that get groups talking.

Why is this important? Jesus taught that we are changed by what comes out of us. Until we confess the truth--not just hear it--we are not changed by it. See this article for more details.

Commentary quoted from world-class writers

Most curriculum has an inherent flaw. They can often get past it, but it cripples nearly every series made. Here is how it works. A committee gets together and decides o a text and topic. Then, someone is assigned to find someone who can write something brilliant about it. Turns out, this is a very difficult assignment and does not always meet with success. One of the reasons I have been a fan of Lifeway's Masterworks series is that that series goes at it in the opposite way. They find someone who has already written something brilliant--books by people like Beth Moore, Billy Graham and John Piper--and turns it into a curriculum.

I try to do a similar thing with my lessons. Each question is footnoted with answers taken from of the best commentaries ever written. John MacArthur, Warren Wiersbe, Holman, Life Application Commentary, and many others. I also include great illustrations and stories form illustration books, trade books and devotional books. Quotes from world-class sources make these lessons different.

Application-driven

Application is not tagged onto the end. We don't spend an hour talking about the passage n a rather abstract way then tag on a question on the end about application. Application is woven all through the lessons. Application is the point.

Howard Hendricks used to say that the goal is not to make smarter sinners. Jesus taught us to "teach them to observe" not just teach them.

Make it easy to find teachers

These lessons are so easy to use, they make it easier--a lot easier to find teachers. In fact, when I was a Minister of Ed, I never struggle to find teaches again after I started writing these lessons. Click here to read that story.

Underlying theology: it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life.

I have written on this extensively in my free E-book on Good Questions Have Groups talking. For a shorter read, see http://www.joshhunt.com/mail289.htm

God is a rewarder. We cannot come to Him unless we believe that He is a rewarder. We must come to Him for reward. We must believe it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life. Prayer must become a sweet hour of prayer of we are not praying very well. We much come to love serving or we don't serve. We must come to love the Word, or else I bet you didn't read this morning. We must come to love the Christian life or we will never come to live the Christian life.

Every lesson is driven by this theology. I continually ask: how does it benefit me to follow God? What does it cost me if I don't follow God? We ask this in every arena. What does it benefit me to forgive; what does it cost me if I don't forgive? When people come to confess that it is in our best interest to live the Christian life, they begin to live the Christian life.

Still not convinced? I offer a free week's trial. Get them to your teachers and see if they don't love them. Email me josh@joshhunt.com for a free username / password.

Update on pastoring

2009-10-22T08:56:00.001-06:00

Many of you know I started pastoring a small church in the country about 45 minutes north of Las Cruces about 6 months ago. I wanted to provide an update on how things are going.

I asked for advice when I started this. I talked to two pastors.

One said, "New broom sweeps clean. Make something happen. Get some things going. Create some momentum. Make a splash."

Another guys said, "Take it slow and easy."

I went with the second guy’s advice.

I got a Sunday School report at our quarterly business meeting the other day. The first business meeting Sunday School was 18. Six months later we are at 24. The way I think of it, this is a 33% increase in six months. We started our first new class this past Sunday. We have a major outreach event planned for the first of the year. (It is not really official just yet, but if you would like to take a peek, see www.joshhunt.com/mail317.htm )

You might be surprised to hear I don't keep up with numbers all that closely. Every few months I check in. Just hearing a quarterly report on Sunday School attendance is enough for me. I think we can make too much or too little of numbers. We ought to check in every now and then. It doesn't need to be a daily obsession. In a small church, real high percentages are possible. In a larger church, if you can shoot for 10 or 15 percent growth a year, you will be doing well.

I am reminded why starting new groups is so critical. My wife started a new Ladies Group using the Masterworks curriculum. (Have I ever mentioned I love Masterworks?) The week before she started she sent a bunch of hand-written notes inviting people to attend. We have been at Salem for 6 months and during that 6 months she hadn't written any hand-written notes. (Neither have I.) Starting a new class motivates you do things like that. It aligns the personal motivation of the teacher with the desire of God to reach all men. I haven't checked for sure, but I think Sunday's Sunday School attendance was the highest since I have been there.

Info on Masterworks:

http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0,1703,A=165376&M=201160,00.html

http://www.joshhunt.com/MasterWorks.htm

http://www.joshhunt.com/mail198.htm

Music

We have been tinkering with music some since I have been there. We have one guy--great guy--who leads playing guitar by himself. I think most would agree that regardless of the style of music, the music gets better as you have more instruments. In old school churches this was a piano and organ and choir. In the new breed, we have a band with guitars and drums. In music, several instruments is nearly always better than one.

I started by adding me. I played guitar in a previous life and thought I could add to the mix. It didn't help all that much. Recently, we have been using a different approach. Lifeway now has a new hymnal and along with it they produced a stack of CDs with every song in the hymnbook. They are split track so you can add as much voice or instrumentation as you want. In the last couple of weeks we have been using these and I am getting really positive feedback. If you pastor a small church, you might look into this. One bit of fine print--the new choruses are split track between instruments and background vocals. There is no lead vocals. I didn't quite get why. http://www.lifewayworship.com/ for details. We also got Easyworship to help with this. You could just use PowerPoint, but you can use some cool moving backgrounds with Easy worship. https://www.easyworship.com/

This story illustrates my approach to leadership. Try lots of stuff; keep what works. We tried adding me on guitar, it didn't help too much. We try supplementing music with CDs. It is working better. If you want to be successful, try to fail at lots of things.

Finding New Teachers

We grow a church by creating new groups. We create new groups by finding leaders. How do we find leaders?

Back in the saddle of local church leadership, I am reminded why I started writing Good Questions. I started writing Good Questions when I couldn't find enough teachers to start new groups. There was a guy in my class that had watched me teach reading questions from my notes. "Let me look at those," he said one day, after still another appeal for people to step up and start teaching. He looked over my notes, which approximate what I now produce online. (The new ones are better as they actually have answers!) He says to me, "If you will keep writing these and get me a copy, I will take a class." Long story short, I never struggled to find teachers again. You will struggle a lot less than you do if you will subscribe to Good Questions.

I think I could start three more classes right now if I had the people to do it. I think I have teachers that would teach using my lessons. My lessons are just too easy to use. If you can read 20 questions, you can teach a class.

Parties

As you might guess, we are using parties for outreach and assimilation. Some have gone better than others. I think one of the reasons God has me in the pastorate is to humbly remind me that church work is hard. (I knew I had been away from it too long when it was stating to look easy.)

We did one party at our house this summer, had a house full of people and had a great time. I told Missy after the party, "That was fun! Let's do it again next month!" We did. The next month we had my wife and I, my in-laws and our music minister. Momma told me there would be days like these.

We did the movie Fireproof. Had a great time and a good crowd. Did the move Facing the Giants. Great time, but not much of a crowd.

Thinking back on it, this is how it always is. That is why the Bible says, "Get into the habit of inviting guests home for dinner." It is a habit. If people come, good. If they don't, do it again next month anyway. Form the habit. Oh, and about the low turn out at Facing the Giants--I got busy (my excuse) and didn't call everyone. Funny how not many show up when you don't call.

One of the challenges we have a Salem that I never had at my previous church is finding prospects. We had lots of visitors where I served before and my research indicates that this is true of most churches. However, it is not true of Salem. The church is out in the middle of no where with almost no drive-by traffic. Its recent history has not been one that has been real attractive in the community. It has not had the reputation of a place that is warm and inviting and happy-- a place where people are learning to live lives that are a little more joyful, a little more patient, a little more loving, a little less worried, and so forth.

What do I mean "in the middle of nowhere"? Check it out

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Salem,+Dona+Ana,+New+Mexico&ll=32.707524,-107.235103&spn=0.008486,0.01929&t=h&z=16

For these reasons, we don't get a lot of visitors, although, here recently we have had a few. The strategy for a church like this is to do community events to attract people to they church. For example, we will be doing a Trunk or Treat on Halloween weekend, inviting all the kids in the neighborhood for free candy. We did a Mother's Day Photo Shoot that went pretty well. We have a major event we are talking about doing after the first of the year called What Divorce Taught Me About Marriage. My guess is this will be an on-going challenge to attract visitors to an out-of-the-way location. Smart businesses almost never make this mistake. They know there is nothing more costly that cheap land. If you ever need to relocate, think about that.

Preaching

I absolutely love preaching every week. If you teach or preach, I trust you feel this way too. Not too many things much better than telling people the good news every week. I just finished a series through my favorite book--Philippians. I plan to start a series this weekend though my favorite Old Testament book, Nehemiah. My message is always the same: I want to show you how to live a life that is. . .

a little more loving
a little more joyful
a little more peaceful
a little less anxious
a little less fearful
a little less worried.
A little more John 10.10b and a little lesson John 10.10a.

Thanks for listening.

Why don't they beleive?

2009-10-21T10:02:00.003-06:00

I love being a Christian, don't you?

I love spending time with God--just me and God--in the mornings. I love walking with God through the day. I love relying on God's wisdom from the Bible. I love the comfort that comes during difficult days--and there will be difficult days. I love the sense of meaning and purpose that following God gives me--the feeling that I am part of a Cause that is bigger than I am. I love being a Christian, don't you?

If we do all love being a Christian, why doesn't the message of Christ naturally and unavoidably spread? Why the coaxing of people to share their faith? Why evangelism strategies and programs? You would think that if we all love it, we would just naturally tell and they would naturally want to hear about good news.

People love to talk about things they love. They love to talk about their new PS 3 (My son camped out 2 nights at Target to get one) or their latest vacation. Why doesn't the idea of the gospel spread?

To be fair, in many places around the world it is spreading and spreading rapidly. I read a book recently that said North America is the only contenant where the gospel is not spreading. Still, it begs the question, why not?

How ideas don't spread

I have been reading in recent months about how idea spread. I didn't realize it until recently, but there have been 5000+ academic studies on the diffusion of innovation, or, on how ideas spread. I have written about this in another article. See http://www.joshhunt.com/mail177.htm

I am so intrigued by this I am re-reading Everett Rogers classic work, The Diffusion of Innovation. Actually, I read the fourth addition first and am now reading the fifth edition. This is a book with a 50-page bibliography. It is very academic, very detailed, very dense. I have often picked it up when I was having trouble sleeping. Works like a charm. Still, am deeply intrigued. I think this ought to required reading for every seminary student.

Here is a summary of Rogers findings:

Diffusion investigations show that most individuals do not evaluate an innovation on the basis of scientific studies of its consequences.
Instead, most people depend mainly upon a subjective evaluation of an innovation that is conveyed to them from other individuals like themselves.

Here is my paraphrase of the summary of Rogers findings:

What has me intrigued these days is why ideas don't spread. Christianity is not the only good idea that doesn't spread. There are well-researched reasons why good ideas often do not spread.

I have done some research of my own recently asking audiences when and how they adopted certain innovations, from email and cell phones to MP3s (what? you still don't have an MP3?) and digital photography.

I have asked groups what year they adopted certain technologies and the answers come in following the predictable S-shaped curve--flat at first, then, at around 10% - 20% adoption, the line hits the tipping point and moves sharply upward until it diffuses through the entire population.

You can actually see it as I have asked audiences at recent seminars. "What year did you start using email?"

1990 - one hand
1991 - one hand
1992 - two hands
1993 - two hands
1994 - three hands
1995 - four hands
1996 - ten hands
1997 - twenty hands
1998 - thirty hands

Then, I follow up with this series of questions relating to how many people used an innovation prior to us using it. Here is how I ask the question. "Think back to when you first started using email. How many people did you know personally that used email prior to you? If you were the first person on the planet that you knew personally that used email, I want you to hold up one finger on one hand. This indicates you are person number one in your group. If you only knew two other people that used email when you started using email, I want you to hold up two fingers. If there were more than ten people that you knew that were using email prior to you adopting, you don't have to take off your shoes and hold up your toes. Just stop with ten fingers. Ten fingers indicates there were ten or more people that you knew that used email before you."

About 85% of the people in the room hold up ten fingers.

I ask about cell phones. "When did you get a cell phone? If you were the first person that you knew that had a cell phone, then hold up one finger. If there were ten or more, hold up ten fingers."

About 85% of the people in the room hold up ten fingers.

I ask about Jesus. "If you were the first person that you knew personally that was a Christian, I want you to hold up one finger. If you knew five people who were Christians before you became a Christian, hold up five fingers. If there were ten or more, hold up ten fingers."

About 85% of the people in the room hold up ten fingers.

Would you agree with this statement, "It would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for me to start using email without knowing some people who used email."?

Everyone agrees.

Would you agree with this statement, "It would have been very difficult, if not impossible for me to start using a cell phone without knowing some people who used a cell phone."?

Everyone agrees.

Would you agree with this statement, "It would have been very difficult, if not impossible for me to believe in Jesus without knowing some people who believed in Jesus."?

The lights are coming on.

Now it gets really fun. I ask for two groups of about five volunteers. One group joins me on one side of the auditorium. I explain that they represent my church group. Another group of five is on the opposite side of the room. They represent the non-Christian group. Normally, evangelism works like this: I yell across the room, "Repent! Place your faith in Christ! There is a God in heaven who loves you!" Yelling across the chasm has proven to be a rather ineffective way to communicate.

A slightly better form of evangelism works like this. I walk across the room. I shake hands with one of the guys in the non-Christian groups. I describe the fact that we become friends. We hang out. We do things together. And, over the bridge of this relationship, the gospel message is communicated.

This is better, but there is still a problem. Do you see it? Imagine a room with two groups separated on different sides. I develop a relationship with this man, but he is still part of his group. And, I am the only person he actually knows that is a Christian. It is almost impossible for him to accept any idea--email, cell phones, or Jesus against the thinking of his group.

But, let's suppose I not only walk across the room and introduce myself to him and become his friend. Suppose I do one more thing. Suppose I bring him back across the room and introduce him to the people in my group. Suppose he becomes friends with all of them, and all of them are able to communicate that they love being a Christian. Has anything changed? Everything has changed.

Whereas it was almost impossible for him to believe because his group did not believe, now, the message is almost irresistible (Totally irresistible if you are a Calvinist!) because he is in a group that does believe.

There is more to evangelism than telling people about Jesus. If we can get them a part of our group, everything changes.

This is why giving Friday nights to Jesus (See http://www.joshhunt.com/friday.html )
is so effective. You surround you average non-christian with five God-loving, church-going, quiet-time-having, giving, serving, and loving it Christians and everything changes.

At this point in the seminar I play an incredibly moving segment of an Andy Stanley sermon where he gives a theological explanation of this same dynamic. But, if you want to see the clip, you are going to have to have me do a seminar at your church! I can't give away ALL my trade secrets!

Send me your testimonies!

This also explains why the giving Friday nights to Jesus has not spread more than it has. I have spend the last 8 years full time trying to communicate this idea. Some--innovators and early adopters--buy it. But, most don't hear from people like me. They hear from people like you. They hear from their peers.

So, if you are an early adopter who has given Friday nights to Jesus, or seen doubling groups work, I would like to ask you to send me your testimonies of two things:

How hospitality ("Giving Friday Nights to Jesus") has worked in your context.
How you have seen growing and dividing groups work

The repeated phrase

2009-10-21T09:53:00.001-06:00

One of the many smart things Rick Warren has said is that people don't remember paragraphs; they remember slogans.

They don't remember sermons or lessons or books. They remember sayings:

Give me liberty or give me death.
The truth will set you free.
People don't care what you know until they know that you care.
Only one life will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last.

Here are a few of my favorites:

You must come to love the Christian life or you will never come to live the Christian life.
If you can get them to the party, you couldn't keep them from class.
Teach a half-way decent lesson each and every week, nothing less will do.
Community must proceed content.
People are not looking for a friendly church; they are looking for friends.
People matter to God.
Give Friday nights to Jesus.
Love at its best is a little bit boring. It is pedestrian, earthy, stuff you can touch and feel. It is Diet Coke and table games and bowling pins and somehow in the mix of all that stuff, people feel loved.
Invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month.
If we love them they will come and they will come to love our Lord.
If we will be gracious to them, they will stick around long enough to hear the words about grace.
There is an epidemic of loneliness.
It is not enough to tell them about a God who loves them; you must love them.

Slogans can be used in every lesson. You would do well to reduce every lesson to a slogan--a memorable sound-bite of condensed truth. People don't remember paragraphs; they remember slogans.

But, having a slogan is not enough. Reducing all that you will say to a slogan is important. Developing the slogan is good. Focusing the content into a memorable slogan is an important first step, but it is only one step. The next step is the real key.

Spin the slogan into a repeated phrase. Say it over and over again. Say it loud. Say it soft. Say it early. Say it late. Say it and say it and say it.

Jesus did this as he began the greatest sermon every preached, the sermon on the mount. He made great use of the repeated phrase:

Blessed are the. . .

What is this sermon about? How to be blessed. How do we know? The use of the repeated phrase. By repeating the repeated phrase over and again you drill it into people's heads. You make it stick. You make them remember. Make liberal use of the repeated phrase.

The classic example of the use of the repeated phrase comes in one of the most famous speeches of all time. Count how many times Martin Luther King says, "I have a dream" in this segment of his famous speech:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

Do you get the idea that Martin Luther King has a dream? This is one of the most powerful pieces of prose ever written because of the use of the repeated phrase. If you would be a powerful communicator, make liberal use of the repeated phrase. Distill your message down to a slogan and say it over and over again. Make it a repeated phrase.

The repeated phrase over time

We don't just do it one time. We don't just repeat the phrase in one lesson. If you just repeat it in one lesson they will forget. Spend some time thinking about what Christian living is all about and distill your thoughts into a handful of repeated phrases. Use these phrases over and over again. Weave them into every lesson. Don't worry about being boring. Make liberal use of the repeated phrase.

As I think about the use of the repeated phrase, I think of one of my heroes, Bill Hybels. There are a few phrases he has said over and over and over again. He doesn't just repeat them once. They come out in numerous sermons over time. The repetition only makes them more powerful. The are memorable sayings. But we remember them because Hybels turns them into a repeated phrase. Here are some examples:

People matter to God.
There is nothing like the church when the church is acting right.
Everyone wins. The believer wins as we join God in the breath-taking adventure of following Him. The lost win as they come to know Christ. The church wins. Everyone wins.
What a wonderful plan: let the leaders lead; let the teachers teach; let the mercy givers give mercy.
Even unchurched people will bring their kids where their kids want to go if their kids want to go there.
People matter to God. (He says that a lot.)

An example in a recent lesson

I thought it might be helpful to close this article with an example of a repeated phrase taken from a recent Sunday School lesson that I have written. I didn't have to look at many lessons to find an example. The first one I looked at had this use of the repeated phrase: The lesson is from Genesis 12.

What do we learn about Abraham from the first three words in verse 4?¹

Abraham was characterized by instant obedience. God spoke and he moved. Can you think of other examples in the Bible when God spoke and someone moved?

Can you think of opposite examples–when God spoke and someone hesitated?²

How do you respond when you sense God is calling you to do something? Would you say it is instant obedience, or something less?

What are the benefits to us of following God in instant obedience?

What does a lack of instant obedience cost us?

Footnotes:

1. Instant obedience is the key phrase.

2. Jonah is one classic example. Another is when Israel didn’t want to enter Canaan at Kadesh. They later changed their minds and wanted to go in, but it was too late.

Once we discover this key idea and distill it into a repeated phrase, there are a handful of questions we can ask over and again every week about a million topics. The above example is on being a person of instant obedience. Suppose the topic is becoming a person of faith and confidence. The questions might look like this:

What is the benefit of being a person of faith and confidence?
What does lack of faith and confidence cost us?
What keeps us from being people of faith and confidence?
How can we become people of faith and confidence?
Who are some examples of people you know that are marked by faith and confidence?
What are some examples of people who limited their potential by not having any faith and confidence. No gossiping, but do you have any stories like that?
What is the relationship between faith and confidence and the John 10.10 abundant life that Jesus promised? Can you have one without the other?
Imagine a world where everyone was full of faith and confidence. . . what would that look like?

By the way, if you would like access to lessons that make liberal use of the repeated phrase, see www.joshhunt.com/sunday-school.htm

Conclusion

If you would teach and make it stick, make liberal use of the repeated phrase.

We grow in Christ as we came to Christ

2009-10-19T10:11:00.000-06:00

We grow in Christ as we come to Christ.

We must believe.

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. Romans 10:10 (NIV)

We enter into a relationship with Christ through believing and we grow by faith.

We must surrender to Christ as Lord

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. John 15:10 (NIV)

There is no salvation without surrendering to Christ as Lord. We grow in Christ as we embrace the fact that He is Lord and I am not. He is God and I am not. He is Master; I am servant.

We must repent

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, Acts 3:19 (NIV)

Repentance means to turn around. We turn around once in an experience known as salvation. We spend the rest of our lives turning more and more toward Him.

We grow as we are saved. One more. Until recently, I never noticed this one:

We must confess

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 (NIV)

Confession is a key part of salvation. We must say it out loud. No secret Christians.

Confession is also a key part of discipleship. If we are to grow in Christ we must say the truth out loud. This is why I believe in discussion oriented teaching. This is why I write Good Questions. Because people are not changed by merely listening to the truth; they must confess the truth.

How are we changed?

I am shocked by how much discussion there is about this these days. As if it were some mystery. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. The truth sets us free. But, we must confess the truth to be changed by it. What we say is as important as what we hear.

Jesus talked about this. "Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'" Mark 7:15-16 (NIV) If you would make people clean, lead them to say the truth. Lead them to confess.

This is why Jesus asked Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" Jesus knew that when Peter confessed the truth--said it out loud, he would be changed by it.

If you would teach people to live the disciples life, lead them to confess the truth. Ask Good Questions that lead them to not only hear the truth, but to say the truth. As they say the truth, they will be changed by it. Whatever comes out of them makes them clean. Lead them to confess the truth.

If you would lead people into greater faith and confidence, create a conversation that leads them to say, "God is in control; He will work it out."

If you want people to embrace forgiveness, lead them to confess, "I have confessed my sins to God and believe that He has forgiven me of all my sins."

If you would create people who are givers, lead them to say, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

We are changed by what we say more than what we hear. Lead people to say the truth and be changed by it.

My best friends attend my group

2009-10-08T10:33:00.002-06:00

Here is a fun one. I asked teachers to guess how many people in your group would say, “My best friends attend this group.” Again rapidly growing groups were more than twice as likely (105%) to be in the top tier—having 5 or more best friends attending their group. What do we learn from this? Rapidly growing classes are groups of tightly-knit best friends. It also puts to rest the myth that non-growing groups are relationally closer. People sometimes fear outreach because they think it will disrupt existing friendships. The opposite is true. Relationships are better in growing groups.

Cell phones and class growth

2009-10-07T11:43:00.003-06:00

I asked how many members’ phone numbers the teacher has programmed into his or cell phone. My suspicion was this. The growing groups would likely have more phone numbers programmed into their cell phone because they contact their group on a regular basis. They have made it easy on themselves to call members and say, “Let’s go get a pizza!” Turns out, my suspicion was right. Rapidly growing classes were more than twice as likely (112%) to have 10 or more class members’ phone numbers programmed into their cells.

It would be interesting to ask about how many potential members’ phone numbers the teacher has as well as to ask about email address, Facebook friends and so forth. Based on this data alone, it is not hard to guess.

Note: this is not based on a scientifically randomized survey. Rather it is based on a survey of people who volunteered to participate.

Chapter Nine: Applications for Pastors

2009-10-06T08:43:00.001-06:00

Imagine a world where growing groups was normal. Imagine a world where the normal thing for the normal group in the normal church under normal circumstances was to grow. It was not unusual or noteworthy; it was expected because that is what usually happened.

Imagine in this world some group leaders sit down to have lunch and swap stories. A young guy speaks up. He has just started leading a group and is a little nervous. "How do you guys do it?" he asks the more senior leaders. "I want my group to grow but I am not sure how."

"Just work the plan." A guy in his thirties says. "I have grown my group through parties. We have a party every month. I have some ladies who do a great job of putting everything together. There are some guys that do some calling for me. I try to help as well, but preparing the lesson each week keeps me busy, so I try to get as many people involved as I can."

"It is real simple," says a lady in the group. "We just go to Pizza Hut every Sunday after church—you know, the one right next door. I wander around the auditorium before the service starts looking for anyone I have not seen before. I invite them out for Pizza. We offer to buy. We have started like five groups in the last six years and all we do is invite people to pizza every week."

"Our deal is Chinese food on Sunday night." Another chimes in. "One a month we all go out for Chinese food. We all order off the menu, get one helping of what we order, set our plate on the table and then eat family style. We can all get a variety that way. We try to invite members who have been absent from the group, as well as recent visitors to the church. Nine times out of ten, if we get them in for Chinese, the show up for class. [Note: the essential fact in each of these cases is a true story.]

The conversation goes on and on like this. Imagine this is normal. That is my dream, my prayer, the guiding obsession of my life. Here is what I know about this dream: we won't get there without pastors. Group leaders don't get there on their own; they are lead by pastors. They don't get there because they read books on What Makes Groups Grow. They are led by pastors. It can become normal in your church for groups to grow, but it will require leadership on the part of the pastors of your church.

Notice, I said, "pastors"—plural. Leading by example needs to be done by all of the pastors. Cheerleading is mostly done by the Senior pastor. Training and rewarding will most likely be done by the Small Group Pastor. Let's talk about each one of these.

Lead by example

Bill Hybels says, "The leader must embody the vision." Growing groups is not the only way to grow a church. But, if you are going to grow your church through growing groups, the leaders must embody the vision.

I have a friend, Lance Witt that was in charge of groups at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church until he moved in the Executive Pastor role. He has told me about how when Rick got in a group, group life skyrocketed. But just as important as Rick getting in a group was that Rick began to talk about his group in his messages. By doing so, he raised the value of group life and it began to get into the dna of the church life at Saddleback. People began to think, "if it's important for someone as busy as Rick Warren, maybe it should be important for me." As the leader embodies the vision of small groups, the people get it.

Andy Stanley champion closed groups. Once a group gets started, newcomers are not allowed to come. (I am not sure they have an armed guard at the door preventing them; perhaps I should say newcomers are not encouraged to attend.) They have grown a huge small group system on closed small groups. They have a publically stated goal of having 50,000 in closed small groups by 1010.

It is easy to see the success at Northpoint and think that closed groups are the answer. But, if you look around at other churches, you will soon find that their closed group system is the exception, not the rule. I have had quite a bit of experience with closed groups and I can't figure out how they make it work. In my experience we start with 12 and 12 weeks later we have 5. That is OK because it was a 12 week class and we start over again next semester with 12 again. But, they have found a way to sustain these groups for 18 months to 2 years. Then they encourage the groups to multiply.

If you listen to Andy you will get the idea that closed groups are the key. He is persuasive in his argument that in closed group trust can develop, people really open up over time and people really get close. You listen for a while and you will be persuaded. But, just as great athletes don't always really know what made them great, sometimes great churches don't really know what made them great. I don't think it is the closed group system at all.

I have caught Andy five times saying essentially the same thing that is a better explanation as to why their small groups are working. Five times I have heard Andy say something like, "I am in a group that is committed to doubling; I want you to be in a group that is committed to doubling." I quoted one of these examples back on page ***********.

The reason groups are working at Northpoint is not because they are closed. It is because the Senior pastor stands up about twice a year in the pulpit and says, "I am in a group; I want you to be in a group." The leader must embody the vision.

Johnny Hunt is another example of a pastor that leads by example. In a world where many pundits are claiming the day of the Sunday School is over, he has seen his Sunday School grow from **************. His Minister of Education has written a coupel of great books on group life including Sunday School in HD. At Woodstock, they live it you. Johnny Hunt's example and cheerleading are a real key. He spoke at my home church last year and I heard him share about how he personally attends a Sunday School class every week. He has plenty of responsibilities that could provide and adequate excuse—including serving as the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, but he takes time to attend a group each week. His Minister of Education, Allan Taylor speaks of the importance of this: "How can the pastor champion the cause of Sunday School? I think it starts by joining and attending a Sunday School class himself. His example will send and unequivocal message to the entire congregation that Sunday School is important around here."

Pastor Larry Osborn champions sermon based groups in this excellent book, Sticky Church. Groups are encouraged to get together and talk about the pastor. You might be thinking, "They do that at my church already!" In this case, what they mean is they encourage people to talk about how to apply the pastor's sermons to their lives. While the idea of sermon-based groups is a good one, I don't think you can attribute their success to sermon-based groups. Larry Osborne leads North Coast Church in Vista, CA. He is a pioneer in the multi-site movement, and as such, has led his church to have twenty weekend services with 7,000 attending. Much of the credit must go to Larry Osborn's leading by example, not to the specific strategy of sermon-based groups. In an Outreach magazine article, he says, "Involve all key leaders. Our lay leadership and staff are expected to be in a Growth Group. If your key leaders are too busy to be in a small group, it sends the message that small groups are an extra credit offering for those with time on their hands.

Nelson Searcy is the pastor of The Journey in New York City. He believes in semester by semester groups. He has an excellent book on the subject called Activate. They have more people attending groups than they have attending worship. But, I don't think the success can be attributed to the semester by semester approach so much as the success can be attributed to the pastor and staff leading by example. His words: "Most leader pastors share a common temptation when it comes to small groups: They want to turn the temptation over to someone else. They want to give it to a dedicated staff specialist so they don't have to deal with it. We know! In theory this doesn't sound like a bad idea. But the truth is, handing the system off too early is the worst thing a pastor can do for the small group system. As a matter of fact, when it comes to implementing a successful small group system, every single person has to be involved, starting with the top."

Pastor, if you would lead your groups to grow, get in a group. Do what Bill Hybels says, "The leader must embody the vision." But, being in a group is not enough. There are three more things the pastor and staff must do.

Cheerleading

Which do you think would make more difference, the pastor attending a group, or the pastor cheerleading group life? I would have thought it would be the pastor attending the group, but again I would have been wrong. The pastor attending a group does matter. Churches where the pastor attends a group are more likely to be growing, but what really makes the difference is the pastor cheerleading groups. Churches where the pastor regularly cheerleads group life are nearly twice as likely (78%) to be growing as those where the pastor does not cheerlead group life.

As you might expect, where a pastor does both, we get the best results:

At Northpoint, they build this cheerleading into the calendar. Every January and May Andy Stanley recasts the vision for group life. Visions don't stick. They have to be repeated continuously.

Training

Training is a third thing that pastors can do to help groups grow. Churches that provide training for their group leaders are more likely to be growing.

What do teachers need to be trained in? I recommend training teachers in the things that predict growth:

• Faith and confidence

• Spiritual vibrancy

• People skills

• Team-building skills

• Hospitality skills

• Outreach strategies. (Could be visitation, hospitality, life-style evangelism or some other strategy.)

• Teaching skills

As you can see, there are lots of areas in which group leaders need to be trained. Effective small group churches have an effective on-going training program. Andy Anderson said, "Sunday School leader training, in my estimation is the most important meeting in the church. If you use this meeting correctly, it will revolutionize the church."

My friend, Dr. Steve Parr is head of Evangelism Ministries for the Georgia Baptist Convention and was formerly head of Open Groups for the Georgia Baptist Convetion. He has done a great deal of research on the Baptist churches in Georgia. He points out that 2/3s of Southern Baptist Sunday Schools are not growing, while 1/3 are growing. What makes the difference? Steve Parr's research suggests that, "one of the crucial differences relates to training."

What does Steve base this on? The Georgia Baptist Convention did a study of the fifty fastest growing churches in Georgia. All but one—98% reported a systematic approach to leader training. 58% of the churches I surveyed had training once a year or less. There is a good reason why many of our churches are not doing well. People do what we train them to do.

Allan Taylor basis his belief in the importance of training on his experience as a football coach. "When I coached High School football, I would not even entertain the idea that some of my players would miss practice. They were expected to be there, an only sickness or family death would excuse them." Allan expects pretty much the same thing of his teachers.

Can training be overdone?

This is an area, however where balance and creativity are in order. People are busy. Larry Osborn talks about this in Sticky Church. He says the biggest mistake they made in their early days was to over-train. They wanted their small group leaders to be the best trained small group leaders anywhere. While that sounds good on the surface, their people had lives. They learned to get creative.

They still have a fall training event, but it is an evening instead of an all day event. They provide CDs for group leaders to listen to so they can get training on the run—while they are driving or doing dishes or, well, running. Here is their most creative idea. They do some of their training on Sunday morning during the worship service. Larry Osborn admits not being too excited about this at first, but he has come around to the idea. While he is preaching in one room, the teachers are in another room being trained. I have talked to a number of churches that do this on an annual basis. They all report the same thing. If they offer training, say, on a Friday night or Saturday morning, they are lucky to get half their leaders there. When they do it on Sunday morning, pretty much everyone shows up.

At Larry Osborn's North Coast church, much of their training is need-based. That is, when a leader runs into a bump, they come up with a resource to help them get around it, or provide coaching to deal with it. Training is more on a need to know basis.

At Northpoint, Andy Stanley and Bill Willits recommend that we "train less for more." "To train less for more" means we narrow the scope of what we train our leaders on, so we can say more about the things that matter most." In the case of Northpoint, the things that matter most for small group leaders can be reduced to six things:

• Think life change. The goal is not to make smarter sinners. The goal is to make disciples.

• Cultivate relationships. Small groups are all about creating community.

• Promote participation. Leaders are to be navigators of discussion, not teachers of curriculum.

• Replace yourself. Northpoint encourages every group to have an apprentice.

• Provide care. The primary way they provide care at Northpoint is not through a team of professionals so much as through small groups.

• Multiply influence. Group multiplication allows leaders to impact lives than they could any other way. Imagine a group that multiplies every 18 months. Consider the following chart:

Year	# of people
Now	12
1.5	24
3	48
4.5	96
6	192
7.5	384
9	768
10.5	1536

Having identified these main 6 things they want small group leaders to know, they say them over and over and over again. In training meetings and personal conversations with group leaders they hammer away at these six things, year after year.

Nelson Searcy agrees with this "less is more" approach. "We've found that a shorter training session can actually be significantly more effective than a longer session." They do half-day training sessions at the beginning of each semester and supplement that with electronic training each week.

Finding a way to train effectively is difficult. These are busy days. Still, people need it and effective churches find a way to get it done. There is one more thing that group leaders desperately need from their leaders.

Rewarding

Michael Leboeuf wrote a business classic called, The Greatest Management Principle in the World. What was the greatest management principle in the world? Here it is in a sentence: whatever gets rewarded gets done. We don't get what we want, what we ask for, or what we hope for. Whatever gets rewarded gets done.

John Maxwell talks about this in The 360 Degree Leader. "It doesn't matter if the thing that gets rewarded is positive or negative. Whatever actions leaders reward will be repeated."

Extensive research bears this out. Healthstream Research conducted over 200,000 interviews over ten years with managers and their employees around the world. Here are a few of their findings:

• In response to the question, "My organization recognizes excellence," the organizations that scored in the lowest fourth overall had an average return on equity (ROE) of 2.4% whereas those that scored in the top fourth had an average ROE of 8.7%.

• The teams and offices rated most highly by employees in response to, "My manager does a good job of recognizing employee contributions," also typically place in the top scores for customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and retention.

• Of the people who report the highest moral at work, 94.4% agree that the managers at effective in recognition. In contrast, 56% of employees who report low morale give their manager a failing grade on recognition, and only 2.4% of have low morale say they have a boss who is great at recognition.

How to rewarding group leaders

I saw a great example of rewarding group leaders through recognition at a Leadership Appreciation Dinner in Louisville, KY. Hal Pettigrew had me in to speak at this annual event. Hal had really done it right. They had awards for just about everyone. Everyone whose group grew any at all got a certificate. If you had 10.1 last year and 10.2 this year you received an award.

They had awards for the fastest growing groups, for the groups that sent out the most workers, and for the groups that saw the most people accept Christ. (Children's groups tended to do the best at this.) And, Hal didn't recognize just the leaders, the whole team received recognition. They were given a bag a candy and told to celebrate with the entire group. The idea was to create lots of winners.

One award really got my attention. It was the teachers' award—nominated and elected by the teachers themselves. The lady who won was and elderly lady who had been teaching forever. I was sitting nearby and watched her as she sat down from receiving the award. She rubbed her hand slowly back and forth across the piece of paper that read, "Teacher of the Year." I could hear her repeat quietly, "I can't believe they did this for me. I just can't believe it. No one has ever done anything like this before."

She kept saying this over and over softly to herself, rubbing her hand back and forth across the piece of paper.

I have a guess. It is only a guess; I can't prove it. When she dies and her kids rummage through her belongings, they are going to find that piece of paper. She will keep it the rest of her life.

It was just a piece of paper—and acknowledgement of work well done. But, she will keep it the rest of her life.

Such is the value of acknowledgement, and it is one of the primary things we do to reward.

An annual appreciation banquet is just one way to reward your leaders. There are a million ways. Richard King, Minister of Education at First Baptist, Las Cruces, NM is fond of passing out Dairy Queen gift cards. They are fairly inexpensive and he passes out lots of them.

A well-worded email, a pat on the back, or some tangible gift can all be used to reward.

Some reward ought to be for everyone—an acknowledgment of work well done. We need to say thank you to everyone for the work they do.

Some rewards are more specialized—for work really well done. Reward the groups that are growing. Get em on the stage. Give em an atta boy!

Some rewards are for behavior, while others can be for results. If a group has a party and invites every member and every prospect, acknowledge and thank them even if they didn't get any new comers this time. This is the time they especially need acknowledgement. When the party goes really well, the success of the party is its own reward. When no one shows up, it is a good idea to say, "Thank for putting in the effort; hang in there, the fruit will come."

All this talk of reward might strike you as a bit secular or worldly. It is not. God rewards. We will talk about this more later. You might dig it out for yourself. There are a lot of verses that speak to the idea that God rewards.

Summary

If you are a pastor, there are four things you can do to help your groups grow:

• Lead by example. Model what you want to see done.

• Be your groups' biggest cheerleader

• Provide training that equips teachers in the skills discussed in this book.

• Reward. Remember: whatever gets rewarded gets done.

We turn now to some final thoughts and applications for teachers.

Why good questions are sticky

2009-10-02T05:30:00.001-06:00

Good Questions are sticky for one simple reason.

People learn more from what they say than from what they hear.

This is very easy to test for yourself. Next time you are in a group ask yourself a simple question when you are finished with class. What do I remember from today's discussion? If you participated in the discussion at all you probably remember far more of what you said than from what you heard.

If we can lead people through a series of Good Questions to say the truth, they will remember the truth. I heard of a Barna study recently that revealed most people can't remember the main idea of a sermon 2 hours after they hear it. Barna didn't say this but I will bet there is one exception.

The preacher. The preacher will remember what he said because we all remember far more of what we say than what we hear.

Jesus employed questions a number of times. One example is when he asked the disciples, "Who do the people say that I am?" It is not like he didn't know. He asked because he knew that when he led Peter to declare, "You are the Christ the son of the living God," Peter was going to believe and remember and be changed by the truth that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God.

People remember and are changed by what they say more than what they hear. Jesus taught that what comes out of a man's mouth makes him clean or unclean. (Mark 7.18)

Let's say you want to teach people the first of the four spiritual laws: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. You want them to get it so you tell them: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. You tell them and 80 percent will forget in two hours. In 24 hours all will have forgotten.

What if, instead of telling them, you lead them through a series of questions so that the final they blurt out the answer: "Because God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life, that's why!"

Whatever questions you asked to get him to that point was a Good Question. That is a sticky lesson. That is the kind of question I try to ask every week in Good Questions Have Groups talking.

And people remember. The lessons sticks. People remember more from what they say than from what they hear.

New Wineskins -- Cowboy church

2009-09-29T10:25:00.000-06:00

Jesus taught that is the responsibility of every generation to reinvent the wineskins--the forms that hold the gospel. We are never to tinker with the wine of the gospel itself. We must be constantly creating new wineskins.

"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. (22) And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." Mark 2:21-22 (NIV)

This is true in every arena of life. Your teenager will not want to drive his grandfather's Oldsmobile. Successful businesses reinvent themselves or face inevitable failure.

The church I grew up in--First Baptist Church, Clovis, NM saw a couple of reinventions. One of them came in the wake of a Lay Witness Mission. This was a meeting where people of all age groups came to our church for the weekend. There were testimonies and small groups and a little bit recreation. They idea was for us to just rub shoulders with these kids. These kids were not like the kids in our youth groups. They were totally sold out to God, and happy to be totally sold out to God. This was a totally new concept for me. Somehow seeing kids my age who were totally sold out to God did something for that sitting in church my entire life had not done. In one weekend, I was changed, and the church was reinvented.

By the way, I have had a dream of a similar kind of meeting targeted toward reinventing the Sunday School. The idea would be to contact your State Convention and see if you could get the names of Sunday School teachers who were getting it done. Have them come and hang out with your Sunday School teachers for the weekend. Get them to share their testimonies, tell stories and generally just hang out.

One of the reasons I believe so strongly that it is possible for groups to double is that I have heard the testimonies of hundreds of groups that have doubled. Perhaps you should invite a dozen or so growing group leaders into your church for the weekend--see what happens.

The second new wineskin back at FBC Clovis had to do with a Richard Hogue Revival. They had the first contemporary music band I had ever heard. Afterwards, we got a band of our own and starting playing some of their songs. Church was different now. It was reinvented now. The wine had been poured into new wineskins.

Introducing the Cowboy Church Movement

One more example of new wineskins in our day: the Cowboy Church Movement. Here is a bit about the history of Cowboy Churches from http://www.texasfcc.org/content.cfm?id=2001

In January 2000, Ron and his wife Jane started The Cowboy Church of Ellis County in Waxahachie Texas and served as pastor there for 15 months. The Cowboy Church of Ellis County is considered the “flagship” cowboy church and recently completed construction on it’s second sanctuary to seat the 1800 people that attend its Sunday morning worship service.

From this humble beginning, the movement is spreading like wildfire. I have had several ask me in the last few weeks, "What do you make of the Cowboy Church Movement?"

Jim Gatliff of Hunt Baptist Association (gotta love that name!) told me last week that there are more than 100 Cowboy Churches in Texas alone, and the movement is quickly spreading past Texas. The top 4 churches with the most baptisms were all Cowboy Churches. Who'd a thunk it!!

Oh, one more odd thing--a lot of the people who attend Cowboy Churches. . . they are not cowboys! Not real cowboys any way. They just like wearing hats and boots and talking cowboy. Its a whole different language. Its a whole different world.

Four things that make Cowboy Churches work, besides the work of the Holy Spirit, which is always the most important thing:

The work in a previously connected culture. People know each other in this culture. Go to you average new suburbs and no one know anyone. Cowboys are connected. And, they are wired to. They use email and texting to help get a crowd. It wasn't that hard for Ron Nolen to get 300 people to show up for that first meeting.
Cowboy churches attract kids who attract their parents. A common activity in a cowboy church is to do buckouts, play days, and ranch rodeos.
Cowboy churches tend to build where land is cheap. They are happy with a somewhat stark metal building. Building costs don't slow them down. It is hard to start 100 churches in 8 years if this is not the case.
Country music. 40 million Americans call a country music station home. The the country gospel/ cowboy music appeals to this crowd.

Cowboy churches are but one example of a new thing God is doing. What is he doing in your ministry?

For more on Cowboy churches, here are a few sites to look at:
http://www.onmission.com/site/c.cnKHIPNuEoG/b.829361/k.7C7F/Cowboy_churches_corral_country_folks.htm
http://www.texasfcc.org
http://www.cowboychurchministries.org
http://www.cowboychurch.net/index.html

Is God doing a new thing in your world?

Teach with depth

2009-09-18T08:49:00.000-06:00

The number one complaint I hear about Sunday School is this: there is no depth. People often say it this way: those are just Sunday School answers.

People want to hear things they have never heard before. Yet, we must be faithful to the old gospel.

People want to think things they have never thought before. Yet, again, we are faithful to an old book.

People want to be challenged to think, to ponder, to consider, to argue.

Think of the opposite: if you don't learn anything new, why bother coming? Apparently, a LOT of people ask that question.

And, there is plenty of depth in our old Book. His mercies are new every morning. You can study it your whole life and only skim the surface.

Here are some ideas to create depth in your lessons:

What is the balancing truth?

The truth is nearly always a midpoint between two extremes. People tend to wander in one direction or the other. For example: Is Christian living active or passive? Is it working and striving and straining, or is it letting go and letting God? is it getting out of the way and letting God live his life through me? If someone gets all Sunday School answery on the passive side with the let go and let God approach, ask them what they do with these verses: [emphasis added]

Book	Description	Context
NIV	Ac 24:16	16 So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.
NIV	1Ti 4:10	10 (and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.

NIV	Php 3:12	12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

If they go the other way, ask them what they do with this verse:

Book	Description	Context
NIV	Gal 2:20	20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

And wrap it up with this one, that has both balancing truths:

Book	Description	Context
NIV	Col 1:29	29 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

Here is the idea. Ask the question: is Christian living about working hard, striving, straining, etc? If they say yes, answer back with Galatians 2.20. If they say no, answer back with any of the first three verses. Whatever they say, respond with: "respectfully, I disagree." If you know them really well, you can say it more directly: "respectfully, I think yu are wrong." (I am not actually sure how respectful that is! Get them thinking. Get them talking. Get them arguing.

I discuss this more in my free e-book: Good Question have groups talking www.joshhunt.com/good.pdf and try to include these kinds of questions in every lesson. See www.joshhunt.com

What have the masters said?

One of the things I like about Lifeway's Explore the Bible Series is that it is so easy to supplement the curriculum with a library of the great writers--living and dead--who have spoken. When you are studying James, pick up a couple of commentaries on James. It doesn't cost that much to get a couple of volumes. Whole sets of commentaries will be expensive.

I do this when I teach our small group that meets on Wednesday night. I use my own questions, but I supplement the questions by reading one or more commentaries before each week's session. I want to bring something new to the table. I want to bring something fresh. I want my people to drink from a living stream, not from the dead sea.

The great teachers I know are lovers of books. They are always bringing fresh insights from the masters. They stand in sharp contrast to the man who says, "I have not consulted any man's wisdom; I have only prayed and read and sought the mind of God." Sounds good, in a way. Here is my question: why doesn't it interest you what God has said through the greatest minds and warmest hearts that have graced Christendom?

As I write my lesson each week, I include quotes from some of the great commentaries. Here are a few of my favorite:

John Macarthur
Warren Wiersbe
New American Commentary
Holman Commentary
Life Application Commentary

By the way, I prefer electronic books because of the ability to search and cross-reference books. I use WordSearch, but there are lots of good options out there.

Great teachers quote from the great teachers. It provides depth.

Teach sanctification as well as justification

How many lessons a year should be on justification (how to be saved) versus how many should be on sanctification (how to grow in Christ)?

My answer: we need more lessons on how to grow in Christ. Again, this is one of the nice thing about following an outline like the Lifeway's Explore the Bible. You just take one chapter after the next and leave the ratio up to God. My experience has been, too many lessons on how to be saved, how to know you are saved, how to tell others to be saved, how to be redeemed, how to be forgiven, etc. We need need more lessons on how to live the John 10.10, fruit of the Spirit life. How to live a life that is a little more loving, a little more joyful, a little more at peace, a little less worried, a little less anxious.

We need to teach people to drink deeply from the well. So, next time you teach, tell them something they have not heard before. Cause them to think something they have never thought about before.

Thoughts on Jerry Rankin Retiring.

2009-09-16T13:25:00.001-06:00

The number of new churches each year has had a 13X increase in the 16 years Rankin has been president.

Yet there has always been a need to track progress. When Rankin took over leadership of the IMB in 1993, the Southern Baptist mission organization saw nearly 4,000 missionaries help start more than 2,000 churches in 142 countries. Last year more than 5,500 IMB missionaries helped plant nearly 27,000 churches and engage 101 new people groups for a total of 1,190 engaged people groups. http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=31262

This is the power of multiplication.

This has been done, to a large degree, through joining God in what God is doing through Church Planting Movements. These lay led small groups are turning the world upside down through the power of multiplication. Andy Stanley is the the poster child for multiplying small groups in America.

We went from 2000 to 27,000 in the last 16 years. Let's put another zero (270,000) in the next 16 years!

What makes a great lesson?

2009-09-11T13:24:00.001-06:00

As I was driving tonight, I got to thinking about, "What does a really good lesson consist of?"

Solid Biblical content/ depth

The number one complaint I hear about lessons is "lack of depth". People want to learn something. They want to hear something they have not heard before. In my lessons, I try to include quotes from some of the greatest Bible scholars around--at least the ones who are available in WordSearch! Great teachers are always investing in great books, scanning the Internet and doing whatever they can to bring some depth to the table. Crummy teachers give Sunday School answers.

Humor

I love to laugh. In a healthy group, the group will provide the humor. It is not such a bad idea to try to find some funny stories in every lesson. Obviously, we want the story to relate to the text and the point of today's lesson. One of the many reasons I like John Ortberg is he nearly always sprinkles a little humor into his messages. Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, and just a bit of humor makes every group better. I just ordered a couple more books so I can include good funny stories in every lesson.

Here is one I found today:

A third-grade Sunday school teacher was uneasy about the lesson "Thou shalt not commit adultery." By way of introduction she asked, "Would someone please explain what adultery means?"

A young sage answered matter-of-factly, "Adultery is when a kid lies about his age."

Jonathan R. Mutchler

1001 Quotes, Illustrations, and Humorous Stories: For Preachers, Teachers, and Writers.

Personal application

Big question: what do you want me to do about what I heard today? Our goal is not to make smarter sinners, but to teach people to live the John 10.10 abundant Christian life. Not, "teaching them everything I have commanded you" but, "Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Good lessons have lots of take-home value--something for me to do this week to make me a little more like Christ.

Lots of participation

In an ideal class, everyone participates--more or less evenly. No one is completely silent, and no one dominates the conversation. I am working an experiment in my own group where I pass out the lessons to each participant and have them take turns asking the questions. They can answer or not. It is going pretty well.

These are the things I try to include in my lessons. What do you think? What goes into a great lesson. Answer on Facebook! I will post this note and you can answer there!

To participate in the latest survey: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/172047/fall-2009-teacher-survey

To be removed from this list, see www.joshhunt.com/signup.htm

Discussion Groups send out more workers

2009-09-04T03:19:00.002-06:00

Need more workers? Get your groups talking! Discussion groups are almost twice as likely to send out six workers or more in the past year.

How many workers has your group sent out in the past year? Answers from those using mostly lecture as a method of teaching. Notice the Orange slice:

How many workers has your group sent out in the past year? Answers from those using mostly discussion as a method of teaching. Notice the orange slice is nearly twice as big.

Discussion groups sent out more workers even though the groups themselves were much smaller:

What is the approximate average attendance of you group? Lecture groups:

What is the approximate average attendance of you group? Discussion groups:

Jesus said the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few. We need to all pray daily that God would raise up workers for the harvest. One other thing we can do is to encourage our groups to discuss rather than passively sit and soak. Discussion groups are about twice as likely to send out lots of workers.

If you would like help in getting your groups to discuss, consider providing Good Questions that have groups talking. See www.joshhunt.com for details.

To participat in the latest survey: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/172047/fall-2009-teacher-survey

This is just Christian Living

2009-09-01T10:03:00.001-06:00

"What you are talking about is not a Sunday School program; it is just Christian living."

I was flattered and encouraged by this comment at a recent conference. I have really been leaning into this perspective as I have done seminars ever sense. I don't talk about a Sunday School program; I just talk about how to live the Christian life.

Not that I talk about all of the Christian life. I had someone say to me once, "You talked for three hours and you never said anything about prayer." True. And, there are some more things I didn't say too much about. I didn't say too much about how you ought to be saved, though I certainly believe it is true. I believe you ought to be in the habit of starting your day with the Bible on your lap, but I didn't say too much about that. I believe you ought to forgive everyone you have to forgive. There are a whole lot of things we could talk about but are not. But what we do talk about will not be a Sunday School program. It will simply be how to live the Christian life.

I believe if you live the Christian life the way the Bible talks about here, you will double your class in two years or less. If your group is not doubling every two years or less, there is a good chance you are not living the Christian life as we describe here. It just comes down to Christian living.

Again, there is a good part of Christian living we are not going to talk about--being saved, living a Spirit-filled life, starting the day with the Bible on our lap, and so forth. Some important things we will assume.

"Get into the habit of inviting guests home for dinner." Romans 12.13 (TLB)

Let me draw your attention to a number of things about this verse through the use of a few questions.

First, what is the nature of the language of this verse? Is this a proverb, prophecy, parable or command?

It is a command, right? As surely as God has commanded us to pray or give, or serve, or do anything else, God has commanded us to get into the habit of inviting guests home for dinner.

Notice it is a habit. The word habit is actually not in the Greek. Kenneth Taylor put it in there to emphasize that this is a present tense verb, which, in the Greek, emphasized a linear action. It is not something we do one time and we are done. We do it over and again. It is a lifestyle. It is a habit. It is the way the Christian life is lived.

Christian living is not done all alone. It is not done sitting in straight rows watching the same events happen on the same stage. We grow as we are joined together Ephesians 2.21, 4.16. The Christian life is a very connected life. It is in my home and in your home and in my business and in yours.

I draw your attention to the word invite. What can you expect to happen when you invite guests home for dinner?

Well, if you have not done this, you might think they will come. And, some will. But, they won't all come. In my experience you will have to invite three or four people for every person that shows up. You can't do anything about whether they come. All you are responsible for is inviting.

Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 1 Peter 4:9 (NIV)

Again, what is the nature of the language of this verse?

It is a command. Our holy, sovereign, Lord, Boss and God has commanded us to offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

We are commanded to offer. You can't control whether or not the come. Offer, offer, offer.

Next question: how are we to offer hospitality?

Without grumbling.

Do you have any idea why Peter might have added, "Without grumbling"?

I can think of at least two reasons:

All good ideas degenerate into work. When we have people over, as we will Friday night, my wife likes to have the house clean. Somebody has to make the dessert, vacuum the floor, clean the bathroom and so forth. If you have not done this, you have no idea how much trouble it is to have fun.
Some people are kind of hard to love. Some times we will invite them and they will come and it will be fun and all is well. But, sometimes we will invite them and they will be boring. Sometimes they will be obnoxious. Sometimes they will be irritating. Sometimes they will be late. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth. 3 John 1:8 (NIV)

We ought to show hospitality. It is not exactly an imperative, but it is something we ought to do. This is not just mentioned once, but is a theme of the New Testament. New Testament living is all about hospitality

I draw your attention to the words, "work together." Ten years of working with group leaders has taught me that often times our teachers are not much into this. They are into teaching. they are into reading and studying. Teachers do not tend to be the funnest people in the room. They tend to be a bit bookish. They tend to be a bit cerebral.

Work together implies we want to get a whole team of people helping with this. We want to get

Inreach leaders to invite every member
Outreach leaders to invite every prospect
Fellowship leaders to plan the party
A class leader who will serve as over all organizer and see that everything happens as it should

The goal is not for you as teacher to do the work of ten men; it is to get ten men (or women) in the work.

When you invite people for lunch or dinner, don't invite only your friends, Luke 14:12 (GW)

This one is the real kicker. I wonder. Have you ever had a lunch or dinner and invited only your friends? I think all of us have. Jesus told us to live different lives. He told us to live inviting lives. He wants us to form a habit that each time we have a lunch or dinner we think about inviting and including someone who is not a part of the group.

I have reduced it to a formula: invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. Don't just invite your friends. Invite people who are far from God. Invite some prospects. Invite some recent visitors to your church. Invite some absentees from you class. Invite. Invite. Invite. Keeping inviting them to the party. Invite them to the dinner. Invite, invite, invite, and you can double your class in two years or less.

But, the formula is not a Sunday School program; it is just Christian living.

Do you serve God to give or to get?

2009-08-29T12:14:00.000-06:00

Do you serve God to give or to get?

The real spirit of the question is, "Should you serve God to give or to get?" If you were all you should be, godly and right thinking and mature and Christ-like, would you serve God for what you could get out of it, or what you could contribute?

I think we would quickly agree that we should serve God to give. We should be more about contributing and less about receiving. We should, if we were more godly, serve God to serve God--to give. We might think so, but we would be wrong.

Hebrews 11.6 lists two steps to drawing near to God: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

The two steps are:

We must believe that God exists. Turns out, this is a pretty easy step. About ninety-five percent of people on planet earth do believe that God exists. Even the devil believes that God exists.
We must believe that God rewards. As the NASV has it, "He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." We either come to God for reward, or we cannot come to God. We must come to God seeking to get a reward. There is no other way.

It makes sense if you think about it. If we are thinking rightly, we realize He is rich and we are poor; He has plenty, we have need; He is strong we are week. The idea that we would come to God to help God out might sound good at first blush, but if we think about it at all we realize we can't help God out. He doesn't need anything. He certainly doesn't need anything we have to offer. We don't have anything He needs. We can't do anything for Him that He needs us to do. He is complete. We are needy.

Eventually we come to the place where we say, as the old Hymn writer said it, "I need Thee every hour. . I need Thee, oh, I need Thee, every hour I need Thee."

How wrong it would be to turn this classic hymn on its head and say, "You need me, oh you need me, every hour you need me." The writer got it right.

Jesus emphasized this point of reward in Mark 10: “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” Mark 10:29-30 (NIV)

C.S. Lewis talked about this:

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. "

The research indicates this was the #1 predictor of spiritual vibrancy: whether you strongly agreed with the statement, "It is always in my best interest to live the Christian life." People who strongly agreed with that statement were two and a half times (145%) more likely to be spiritually vibrant when compared with those who only agreed with that statement.

When compared with those who disagreed with the statement, those who strongly agree were four and a half times (350%) more likely to be spiritually vibrant. This one factor mattered more than anything else I could find.

You might be tempted to think this is a rather abstract theological point that has not much to do with every day life. You'd be wrong. Here is why.

We are irrevocably hard wired to pursue what we believe to be in our best interest. It is built into our programming. We can't avoid it. We have to learn to live with it. If we believe that God is a rewarder and we will be rewarded for following Him, His yoke becomes easy and we follow Him almost automatically. If we think we should follow Him but we would rather go our own way because we think we know best, we are going to be in a constant battle of the will with God. It is not enough to submit our will to Him. We must believe--not merely believe that He exists. We must believe He always rewards. We must believe it is impossible to follow God and not be rewarded. Ought-to, and should and you-better will never do. We must believe that he rewards.

I have written thousands and thousands of sentences, but I have only written one that I think is profound. Here it is:

We must come to love the Christian life,
or we will never come to live the Christian life.

Break it down: we must come to love prayer, or we don't pray very well. Prayer moves from being a duty and an obligation and becomes a delight--a sweet hour of prayer--or we are not praying very well.

We come to love serving or we are not serving very much.

We come to love the Word and it become sweeter than honey as the Bible says, or I will bet you struggle to spend time in the Word. You have to force yourself and you can't force yourself consistently.

You must come to love the Christian life, or you will never come to live the Christian life.

Self-discipline is over-rated in a lot of Christian teaching. Not to say there is not a place for self-discipline. Balance is an issue. Sometimes you need self-discipline. Sometimes we need to do what we should do whether or not we feel like it. But, if you try to live your whole life this way, you are in trouble. If you trying to live your whole life forcing yourself to do what you don't want to do because you don't think it is in your best interest, you can't live that way. You will get tired. Eventually you will do what you believe to be in your best interest.

You must come to love the Christian life, or you will never come to live the Christian life.

Application

We can apply this idea to many arenas. Let's start with one many of us struggle with: eating healthfully and exercising regularly.

Most of us struggle to eat healthfully and exercise regularly, but, most of us know a few people who don't. I am thinking of a 25 year friend just now. We have gotten to eat hundreds and hundreds of times together. We have gone on family vacations together. We used to work out together, before I fell off the wagon.

George loves exercise. He loves eating healthful foods. Nine times out of ten when we go out he will get grilled chicken and broccoli, or something like that. Occasionally he will splurge, but usually it is grilled chicken and veggies. I have known George for twenty plus years and for twenty plus years he has exercised five or more times a week, every week. He loves it. He tells me about how he loves this warm feelings in his muscles after he works out. I don't actually know what that feeling is, but he tells me it feels good.

People who have won the battle with healthful eating and exercise feel this way. They love it. They love exercise. They love that warm feeling in their muscles. They love that clean feeling George talks about he feels when he eats healthful food.

So, let's paraphrase our saying: You must come to love healthful eating, or you eat like I do! You must come to love exercise, or you look like I do!

We are like airplanes with an autopilot that tells the plane where to go. Modern planes can even take off and land on auto-pilot. Pilots have told me they let the plane land itself every so often, just to make sure the system works.

Once the plane is in the air, you could grab the wheel and force that plane to go North when its autopilot is telling it to go South. You can force it to do the opposite of what the autopilot is telling it. But, after a while, you will get tired or distracted, or for any number of reasons you will let go of the wheel and the plane will go where the plane is programmed to go.

Your programming is your belief as to what is in your best interest. You can't change the programming. Eventually you will do what you believe to be in your best interest. You can force yourself to do otherwise for a time, like you can force the airplane to go contrary to its programming, but, eventually, the programming always wins. Eventually, you will do what you believe to be in your best interest.

You either come to love the Christian life, or you never come to really live the Christian life.

How to affair-proof your marriage

I have known a number of people over the years who have had affairs. I have talked to people who were thinking about having affairs, in the middle of affairs, and years after the affair. I had a situation once where the host--a minister--who had invited me to speak confessed to me that he was in the middle of an affair--deeply in love with someone who was not his wife.

The subject of this article fits into one of my talks. There was a time when I communicated it this way. "Right now, one of my wife's best friends is deeply in love with a man who is not her husband. He is a deacon. She is a deacon's wife. . ."

If you are in an affair, by the way, let me speak into your life what I said to my host who confessed his affair: run, don't walk away from that woman. Don't worry about hurting her. Don't worry about her state of mind. Don't worry about her kids. Don't worry about any stated or implied promises you might have made to her. You made another promise to another woman--your wife--and you need to work on keeping that promise. If you can get your marriage back together you will spend the rest of your life happy that you did. If you don't, you will spend the rest of your life regretting it.

When people are in an affair, they see it this way. I have two choices. Behind door number one is the road of righteousness. I know I should follow that way. I know I ought to. God would be pleased. My mom would be pleased. People at church would be pleased. But, I would be miserable. I know I should take door number one, but I just don't know if I can stand the misery.

Behind door number two things are completely different. I could be with him! I know God would be disappointed. I know it is a sin. I know it would upset the kids. I know it is wrong, but I would be soooo happy! I could be with Him!

As long as you see it that way, I don't give your marriage much of a chance of survival. Eventually we do what we believe to be in our best interest. If he is willing, your marriage is over.

People who go down that road eventually learn something. He is just another guy. He is not prince charming. He is not all that. He is not Mr. Sensitive, Romantic, Knight-in-shinning-armor. He is just a guy. He wasn't worth wrecking your family over. He wasn't worth shaming the name of Christ over. He wasn't worth crushing your kids over. He is just a guy.

And, you and that guy are going to try to figure out what most couples never learn: to live together in unity, peace, love and joy. Most couples never get there. And you are going to try to get there just like you tried to get there with the last guy, but this time, you have some baggage. You have an ex. You have child-support issues. You have step family issues. You have a whole slew of issues that are going to make this marriage considerably more difficult to find unity, peace, joy and love in. It might happen, but the odds are really against you.

The odds of finding a great relationship would have been twice as good in the first marriage if you would have just devoted half the energy into that relationship that you devoted into justifying this affair.

But, ought to and should and duty won't keep you there. You have to believe God. You have to believe that He is a rewarder. You have to believe that it is always in your best interest to live the Christian life.

We say the opposite because it sounds so good. It just sounds spiritual. I have read this line in several books, and heard it in a sermon or two. I could raise my voice and say this at the right cadence and pound the pulpit at just the right time and get a house full of Baptists to say, "AMEN!" It just sounds that good: "God is more interested in your holiness than your happiness! Your happiness doesn't matter! Its not about you! Pursue God! Please Him! Who cares about your happiness? It is all about God!" It sounds spiritual. My question: is it true?

The problem with this statement is not the statement itself. It is the assumption behind the statement. Do you see it? The assumption is that happiness and holiness do not come together. They are separate. You can't have both. You have to choose between the two. You can choose happiness in which chase you will be happy but God will be grumpy. Or, you can choose holiness, in which case you will be miserable, but God will smile. Now, make the right choice: make God happy. Choose holiness!

This assumption is fundamentally false. Holiness and happiness are not separate; they come together. You can't be holy and grumpy. The Bible commands happiness: Rejoice in the Lord always. Do you know what you call someone who tries to be holy and grumpy? A deacon!

And happiness at its best is found in God. The happiest times in my life have been times of worship, or times in the sweet spot of serving God. Jesus promised us life and life to the full.

One illustration of this is in a study that was done on human sexuality. They interviewed every kind of sexual lifestyle imaginable to try to discover who has the best sex life. They interviewed monogamous couples and priests who, on a good day, are celibate. They interviewed subscribers to Playboy Magazine and those who subscribe to the Lifestyle (nudists). They interviewed deviant weirdoes who engage in every kind of sexual activity imaginable--much of it most of us have never imagined. Guess who they discovered are the happiest people on the planet in terms of their sexual satisfaction?

Do you think it was the free-wheeling sexual activist? Do you think it was the deviant weirdoes? Correct answer: monogamous couples. Question: do you think God was surprised by that, or do you think He has known all the way along? If He has known all the way along and He is a nice God, what kind of rule would He make for planet Earth? He would make the rule that would contribute to man's happiness. He would make the rule that would require people to live a monogamous lifestyle. And, as it turns out, that is the rule He gave us.

I was sitting in my own Sunday School class a few months back. We have this one lady in class that can get pretty fired up. The conversation was heating up and she blurted out, "Well, there is doing what is right, and there is doing what feels good. I think we just need to do what is right."

Here is what I think she meant to say: "There is doing what is right, and there is doing what feels good IN THE MOMENT. In the long run, doing what is right feels good. We will always be glad we did what is right. It is always in our best interest to live the Christian life over the long run. In the short run it might cost us. In the long run we will be glad we did.

How far can you push this?

Is it always in your best interest to live the Christian life? Always? Any exceptions?

Perhaps your remember the story of Cassie Bernall. She was a High School student in Littleton, Colorado. She was a good kid who had recently rededicated her life to Christ and was active in her youth group.

She was in the library, minding her own business, working on a paper. Two of her classmates came in shooting everything in sight. She dropped to her knees in a praying position. One of the shooters pointed a gun at her face. (The forensic evidence suggests it was touching her face when it went off.)

Perhaps taking a cue from her praying position, he asked her a question: Do you believe in God?

God's calling on Cassie's life is fairly easy to understand at this point. The Bible says if we are ashamed of Him before men, He will be ashamed of us before our Father in heaven. It is simple to understand, but not easy.

I have a biography on Cassie's life. The title is, She Said Yes talking about that moment in the library. And he blew her brains out with the weapon pushing against her face.

Thinking people might be tempted to wonder, "Mightn't she been better off to cave? Mightn't she have been better off to remain silent or to say, "I just don't want any trouble."

The Bible teaches that reality is like a line that stretches forever and ever. Not just a mile or two, or around the earth, or our Galaxy, but forever and ever. On that line sits a dot we will call time. All of time from Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs to Noah and Moses and Abraham and Nehemiah and Jesus and you and me all fit on that dot that sits on that line. Eventually, we get off the dot onto the line that stretches forever and ever.

And the Bible teaches, metaphorically, that when we get off the dot onto the line that stretches forever and ever, that Cassie's line will be above our line. That is, the Bible suggests (Revelation 4) that those who are martyred for their faith will receive a greater reward in heaven--that is the line that stretches forever and ever--than will the rest of us.

Now, it will still be heaven for the rest of us. It will still be good. And I probably think of this in too materialistic way, but I see it like this. When we go to get a meal in heaven, Cassie will be at the front of the line. When we go to a concert, Cassie will get a front row seat and a back stage pass. When we go on a trip, Cassie will get those good seats at the front of the plane. Ten gazzillian years from now, Cassie will still be on the front row, in the front of the plane and in the front of the line.

I think if Cassie could read this she would say, "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, it is always in your best interest to live the Christian life, over the long run." You will always be glad you did, eventually. It may be a while; it may only be from the viewpoint of eternity, but eventually and forever you will always be glad you followed God. And forever lasts a long, long time.

What if God makes me do missions?

A lot of people don't want to sell out to God because they are afraid that God will call them to missions and they will have to go to the darkest part of Africa. And, God might. But do you know what God does to the heart of those whom He calls to missions?

My parents served as missionaries in the Philippines for twenty five years. I visited them between College and Seminary for about six weeks. I remember one day just after breakfast, the conversation slowed down and my Mom's mind starting drifting. She looked out the window and then looked back at me. "I think the Philipino people are the prettiest people on planet earth." That is what God does to the heart one one God calls to do missions.

Not to say there was not a price to pay. When my sister was married, they didn't attend the wedding. They were ten thousand miles away. They watched my brother give her away by way of video tape.

My parents had retired by the time my second and third children were born, and they were able to come visit and help out just after the birth. But with our first born, they were on the other side of the planet. They have no memory of Dawson before he is two years old. There is a price to be paid for serving God.

My mom lost a brother when they were overseas. It was a tragic farming accident and she wanted very badly to be at the funeral. But transportation costs were prohibitive, and even if it were not for cost, it would just take to long to get home. That was before the days of jumbo jets and travel was very slow. There is a price to be paid for serving God.

But they wouldn't trade it for anything. They have no regrets. They are eighty five years old now, and they have no regrets.

That is how it is when you follow God. No regrets. God rewards. It is good to follow Him. Those who follow Him are glad they did so.

But, you have to believe that. You have to believe it is in your best interest to follow God because you are hard wired to pursue what you perceive to be in your best interest. You cannot draw near to God except you believe He is a rewarded. You will be rewarded for pursuing Him.

Here is a great quote from John Piper:

1. The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is our highest duty. Millions of Christians have absorbed a popular ethic that comes more from Immanuel Kant than from the Bible. Their assumption is that it is morally defective to seek happiness—to pursue joy, to crave satisfaction, and to devote ourselves to seeking it. This is absolutely deadly for authentic worship. The degree to which this Kantian ethic flourishes is the degree to which worship dies, for the essence of worship is satisfaction in God. To be indifferent to or even fearful of the pursuit of what is essential to worship is to oppose worship—and the authenticity of worship services (in any culture or any form).

Not a few pastors foster this very thing by saying things such as, "The problem is that our people don't come on Sunday morning to give; they only come to get. If they came to give, we would have life." That is probably not a good diagnosis. People ought to come to get. They ought to come starved for God. They ought to come saying, "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God" (Ps. 42:1). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God. It is the job of pastors to spread a banquet for them. Recovering the rightness and indispensability of pursuing our satisfaction in God will go a long way toward restoring the authenticity and power of worship—whether in solitude, in a group of six elders in Uzbekistan, in a rented garage in Liberia, in a megachurch in America, or on the scaffold in the last moment just before "gain."

Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions.

You must come to love the Christian life, or you will never come to live the Christian life.

Practical Teaching leads to spiritually vibrant people

2009-08-28T09:56:00.000-06:00

Practical teachers are more likely to produce spiritually vibrant people -- by a wide margin. Groups where the teaching was described as very practical were more than twice as likely to report high levels of spiritual vibrancy.

Groups where the teaching is practical were also more likely to be growing.

I was watching the clock in Sunday School. About five minutes to quitting time. The conversation was interesting--even spirited--but I wasn't sure exactly where we were going. I raised my hand. My teacher called on me.

"In about five minutes, we are all going to be walking out that door. (I pointed to the door.) What exactly do you want us to do about what we heard today?"

(Aren't you glad I don't attend YOUR group?)

That line got to be the running joke in class for months to come. If ever the conversation would get the least bit off subject, my teacher would say, "We need to get back on topic, because I know what Josh is thinking: what do you want to do about what we heard today?"

The truth is, everyone of your students is thinking the same thing. Every week. All the time. What do you want me to do about what we heard today? They may not say it. They may not be as frank as I am (My middle name is Frank). But they are thinking: what do you want me to do about what we heard today?

Every teacher every week ought to provide a clear answer to this question: what do you want me to do about what we heard today?

Practical teaching matters. It was the second most likely predictor of spiritual vibrancy. Those who enjoyed very practical teaching were 125% more likely to be highly spiritually vibrant to those whose teaching was only somewhat practical. Practical teaching matters. Practical teaching produces spiritually vibrant people.

Practical teaching

In some circles, practical teaching is seen in contrast with deep teaching. Deep teaching is spiritual and theological, and, well, deep. Practical teaching is seen as light and fluffy, shallow, and sometimes, man-centered. How-to preaching and teaching doesn't get all that much respect.

But, how-to teaching is what Jesus taught is to do. This is one of my favorite examples. See if you can find the mistake in this rendering of the Great Commission:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,and teaching them everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

Did you find it? Here I will quote it right. See if you can find the difference:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

Find it? "Teaching the to obey," not, "teaching them everything I have commanded." The difference is crucial. The object is Christian teaching is not to make smarter sinners. It is not to create people who can quote the facts of the Bible buy live like the devil. It is to create people who act like saints. We are out to create people who are a little more loving, a little more joyful, a little more kind, a little more at peace, a little less anxious, a little less angry, a little more like Jesus.

Spurgeon said, "It is a right thing to have practical teaching in connection with sound doctrine, and common-sense in conjunction with deep spirituality." --Spurgeon's Collected Sermons – Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.

John MacArthur said, "Paul returns from the lofty heights of theological instruction (chaps. 1 and 2) to the basics of practical Christian living. For Paul, theology was not merely abstract reasoning, but practical truth to affect daily life." --MacArthur New Testament Commentary – 1 & 2 Thessalonians.

Practical teaching is not an add-on. It is not an extra. It is not optional. It is not just nice-to-have. It is not left to the individual to figure out how to make the application. Application is what teaching is all about. Application is the point. We are to teach people how to. How to pray. How to know their spiritual gifts. How to serve. How to be a good dad. How to give. How to control your tongue. How to beat bad habits. How. How. How. How to live the Life.

Speaking of how, let's talk about how to teach practical, life-changing lessons.

Good application comes from good doctrine

There is nothing more practical that clear-headed thinking about theology. The book of Ephesians is a great example

Chapters 1 - 3 Theology
Chapters 4 - 6 Practical application of theology.

If you want to build people of faith, confidence, optimism and high self-esteem, don't start with how-to. Start with good theology. Don't talk about the student. Talk about God--how God is all loving and unconditionally accepting. Talk about the fact that we are sinners and God accepts us in spite of our sin. Talk about how the cross made it all right. Once we have those truths straight, we go on to how we can apply those things to our lives.

If we want to help people with their finances, we don't start with teaching them to buy Quicken. That might come later. We start with God--how God owns everything and He has made us to be stewards. Talk about how the purpose of money is to glorify God. Talk about the poor. Talk about giving. Then, when the foundation is laid we can move on to practical steps to manage money.

If you want to teach people about service, don't start with a spiritual gift test. Start with God. Talk about how God is a worker. Jesus said, "My Father is always working." Work is good. Work pre-dates the fall. It is not a punishment. When we are working near the sweet-spot of our gifting, we find fulfillment and joy in life. Lay the foundation of theology, then get practical.

Always end with "so what?" Remember these three letters: YBH (Yes, but how?) Remember my question to my teacher: what do you want me to do about what we heard today.

The opposite can also work. Start with life and ask, "What does the Bible have to say about this?" Give biblical answers, not answers from Readers Digest or Oprah. Illustrated, perhaps, from Readers Digest, but answers from the Bible.

Good teaching is about connecting the Bible to life. It needs to have both the Bible and life. You can start with the Bible or you can start with life, but be sure and include both. Be sure and connect the two.

Distinguish: what we could do and what we are going to do

It is helpful to distinguish between what we could do and what we are going to do. By making this distinction, it frees the mind to think of multiply ways that might help us apply the Word. Ask questions like:

What are ten ways a husband could serve his wife?
Let's go around the room and each person state one way we could reduce worry by 50%.
Let's divide into two teams. You will each have two minutes. Let's see which group can come up with the most different ways we could be involved in evangelism.

Try to emphasize as you are in this phase that we are not committing to do anything. We are just brainstorming things we could do. Because we are not committing, it frees the mind to be creative. There are no bad ideas in brainstorming. We are just talking about things we could do.

Then, we ask for the sale: what are you doing to do? or, what do you want to do about what we talked about today?

This application can take of of two forms.

Baby steps and the big order

Often times, the best way to do application is to ask for baby steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Sometimes we ask people to live holy and godly lives and they can't figure out how to get to square one.

The Navigators have a little booklet called Seven Minutes with God. The point is not limit your time with God to seven minutes. It is to make quiet time accessible. It is to make it doable. Who can't set their alarm seven minutes early? It is a baby step. Anyone can do it.

Once you get there, you might have so much fun that you want to do more. But, if the teacher asks for an hour of prayer, it might be so overwhelming that he gets nothing. Sometimes we do well to ask for baby steps.

However.

Sometimes, we ask for too little. We do well to go beyond--way beyond baby steps from time to time. Sometimes we need to ask the group to lay down their lives and follow Christ. Sometimes we need to ask them to quiet being half-hearted. Sometimes we need to ask them for commitment. Sometimes we need to ask for the big order. There is a place in this world for the big challenge.

This is how Jesus operated. At first, he asked for baby steps. He said, "just follow me." No big commitments. No contracts. No signing on the line. Just follow me.

Only later did he say, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24 (NIV)

Often we need to ask for baby steps; eventually we need to ask for the big order. You have not because you ask not.

Cost / benefit

I read this in my quiet time this morning: "Honor your father and mother"--which is the first commandment with a promise--"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." Ephesians 6:2-3 (NIV)

Whether stated or implied, this is the promise of all commands: that it may go well with you. God gives us commands so that life will go well with us.

If you want to persuade people to apply the teachings of scripture, point out often that the commands are given so that it will go well with us. It is always in our best interest to live the Christian life. This is the subject of next week's article, and the #1 thing distinguishing classes that create spiritually vibrant people.

Positive atmosphere contributes to spiritual vibrancy

2009-08-27T09:33:00.002-06:00

I have read a lot of self-help / pop-psychology books and audio programs over the years. Books by people like Brian Tracy, Ziq Ziglar, Denis Waitley , and Jack Canfield. Reading this kind of literature is like eating fish--it is good as long as you realize you have to throw out the bones. There are a few bones to throw out, but I have found a lot of good stuff in there as well.

I have long thought that preachers would do well to include some of that good stuff--some of that message of hope and optimism and you can to it!

Well, in recent years, we have an example of a preacher who has done just that -- Joel Osteen. And, it has worked marvelously. This message of hope and optimism and you can do it has grown to be the largest church in America--almost twice as big as whoever is second. Most pastors, and most teachers could learn a thing or two from Joel Osteen.

Having said that, I am not a big fan of Joel. The problem of Joel is that, well, he has too much of Joel. Is there a medium ground?

I heard the sermon Joel preached the week after September 11. The gist was, "We saw a lot of terrible things happen this week. But you don't need to worry about those things happening to you because you are a child of God." Bzzz. Bad theology.

Still, I think we could learn something from someone we might disagree with at times. Most teachers and preachers could lean into being a little more positive, faith-filled, optimistic and hopeful.

The problem with much of the preaching and teaching I hear is that it is too much gloom and doom and you are dirty rotten sinners and need to straighten out and the world is getting worse and worse and we can long for the Leave It To Beaver Days, but they are never going to come back and the world is going to hell in a hand basket and there is nothing we can do about it and we were told in the last days terrible things would happen and we just need to hunker down and wait for Jesus to rescue us from this mess. (Is that a run-on sentence?)

That data bears this out. Classes that are marked by spiritually vibrant people at more than twice as likely (125% more likely) to create spiritually vibrant people compared with those who don't describe the atmosphere as positive and uplifting.

Groups with an atmosphere that is positive and uplifting are also more likely to experience growth.

Question: how do we create a biblical, balanced, hopeful, faith-filled atmosphere that is positive, uplifting, and true to the Bible? I can think of four statements that ought to permeate our preaching and teaching.

We are loved even though we are sinners

Question: does the Bible teach a high view of man, or a low view of man? Is our problem thinking too highly of ourselves, or two lowly of ourselves? My answer: "other, please explain."

From one perspective the Bible teaches a very low view of man. We are all sinners. The best we can do--our righteousness--is like filthy rags. We do well to humble ourselves before an exalted God.

From another perspective, as the old hymn had it, "Red, brown, yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight." We are worthy that the Father would give us the life of His son so He could be close to us. If I gave up the life of my son so I could be close to you, I'd be pretty frustrated if you didn't feel loved. One of my favorite passages on this is this passage from Zephaniah:

The Lord your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing."
Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV)

God takes great delight in you. He sings over you like a mother singing lullabies over her beloved child.

I did a sermon once on one word. Sometimes we preach an idea. Sometimes we preach a chapter. Sometimes a passage. Sometimes a verse. Sometimes a word: beloved.

It was a messy, meandering message. It didn't have a lot of structure; no three points and a poem. Just one point: you are God's beloved. He adores you. He loves you. He likes you. He wants to hang out. I read several passages where the word beloved is used in scripture, tried to explain the context--no brilliant insights from the Greek--just paraphrasing what is obvious from any English translation. The message wandered back and forth from the stories in the Bible to application to today's life. At one point I said something like, "Maybe there is someone where who doesn't feel loved. You don't feel special. You don't feel treasured. I want to stand before you as God's spokesmen and ask you to repent. Repent of not feeling loved. Embrace your status before God as loved by God. Embrace your status as his treasure, the apply of His eye. Embrace the view of yourself that God has of you." The message wandered on like this for half an hour. I think my preaching professor would have flunked me.

It was the most complemented sermon I have ever preached. As I reflected on that I came to realize that I have probably spent too much time in my preaching and teaching telling people what they ought to do and should have done and not enough time telling them they are God's beloved.

You wouldn't have to hear me preach very many times before you heard me pronounce one of my favorite words: balance. If the beloved message is all you ever preached, you would not be preaching the whole counsel of God.

We have the mistaken belief that we need to have a little condemnation to make people behave. Romans 8.1 teachers condemnation has no place in the Christian life. No place. It is not condemnation that makes us behave. "It is your kindness, Oh Lord, that leads us to repentance."

We can do better even though we have failed

A positive, uplifting atmosphere means that we are loved. It also means we can do better. We can beat worry. We can get out of debt. We can develop discipline to spend time in the Word and prayer. We can loose weight. We can restore relationships. We can double our classes and grow our churches. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Too much group talk is just the opposite. It is not positive and uplifting. It is not hope filled and faith filled. It is poor me, we are just a bunch of dirty rotten sinners and we are just like the world and it will never be any better we just have to learn to live with it. Who wants to come to that? How does that create spiritually vibrant people? It doesn't Spiritually vibrant people are created in an atmosphere that is positive an uplifting.

Not to say that we can be perfect; only that we can do better. We can make substantial improvement. We can be significantly more loving, noticeably joyful, visibly at peace. Jesus really can make a difference in our lives. It is real. It is significant. It is visible.

I knew a man in the Philippines who was, by his own admission, a very bad man. His name was Mr. Gepte. (pronounced as an "H"). He had two wives and 24 children and was mean as a snake. He used to cut people with razor blades just for kicks. You didn't want to be his enemy. But, Mr. Gepte got saved. My dad says, "I can't defend this biblically, but it seems to me that some people get saved and some people get really saved." Mr. Gepte got really saved. He visited his son shortly after he was saved and his son could see the difference. The son said, "My Poppa has a new man inside." He had never heard of 2 Corinthians 5.17 ("If any man is in Christ he is a new creation. . ") but he observed that his daddy had a new man inside. And, it wasn't a flash in the pan. My dad later trained his son and grandson in Bible School. The prayer of his life was that all of his 24 children would come to Christ. My parents visited Mr. Gepte on his death bed and rejoiced with him that God had answered his prayer and all of his children had come to know the Lord.

Romans 8.28 is still true

Life is hard. Sooner or later, we all realize it. Life is hard.

I heard this growing up and I got the idea there were speed bumps in life. I am not talking about speed bumps. I am talking about train wrecks. Sooner or later most of us have them. A divorce, the death of a child, the untimely loss of a husband. Sooner or later, it happens to most of us. Life can be really, really hard.

But, Romans 8.28 is still true. God can make all things work together for good. He can take a quadriplegic like Joni and giver her a world-wide platform. He can take Chuck Colson's jail sentence and turn it into an international prison ministry. He can take the pain of your life and bring good from it.

God is God. That is it. That is enough.

I did a fascinating study of Hebrews eleven a few years back. You know the passage--the famous faith chapter. It is an encouraging chapter. One sound bite after another of people who conquered and overcame through faith. Then, the writer turns a corner. See if you can spot the sharp turn in this passage:

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days. 31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. 32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

Heb 11:29-38 (NIV)

Here is my take-away from this passage. When we pray we cannot be certain that God will answer any particular prayer the way we have asked it, except for the prayer for the forgiveness of sins. Sometimes God says, "yes." Sometimes He says, "no." Sometimes He says, "later." Sometimes we pray that He takes this thorn in the flesh from us and He says His grace is sufficient. Jesus prayed, "take this cup (the cross) from me." The Father said "no." Faith is not being certain that God will positively answer any particular prayer--except the prayer for forgiveness.

What is faith, then? Here is what it means to me: God is God. That is it. That is enough.

God is God. That is it. That is enough. We can't be sure He will do this. We can't be sure he will fix that. We can't be sure that He will do any particular thing. We can be sure that He is God. He is good. He is wise. He knows all things. He loves us. His ways are not our ways; they are above our ways. We may not like the way He runs the universe at times. We may not like the way He runs the circumstances of our lives at times.

Pastor Kenton Beshore is fond of talking about "double-fisted faith." He takes the phrase from this passage:

⁽¹⁶⁾Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. ⁽¹⁷⁾If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. ⁽¹⁸⁾But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." Daniel 3:16-18 (NIV)

I draw your attention to these words: "Even if He does not." I believe that God will deliver us, but even if He does not, we believe that God is God and that is enough. We believe God can heal, but even if He does not, we still believe that God is God and that is enough for us. We believe that God can, but even if He does not. . .

God is God. That is it. That is enough.

Is life better or worse for Christians?

2009-08-26T11:09:00.003-06:00

People who feel loved are more spiritually vibrant

2009-08-26T10:30:00.001-06:00

We move now into the top tier of things that really matter in terms of creating spiritually vibrant people. We have talked about things that didn't matter very much, things that mattered a little. These things matter a lot.

The first one is feeling loved by the people in the group. Here is the statement: "I feel loved by the people in my group." People who strongly agreed with this statement were more than twice as likely (111%) to be in the top tier of spiritually vibrant people when compared with people who only agreed, or disagreed with that statement. Creating a group where people strongly agree that they feel loved by the people in the group creates spiritually vibrant people.

Feeling loved also had a positive correlation with the growth of the group

Isn't this what the Bible says?

Jn 13:34	"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Jn 13:35	By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Jn 15:12	My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Jn 15:17	This is my command: Love each other.
Ro 13:8	Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.
1Th 4:9	Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
1Pe 1:22	Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1Pe 4:8	Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1Jn 3:11	Love One Another
1Jn 3:11	This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
1Jn 3:23	And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
1Jn 4:7	Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1Jn 4:11	Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1Jn 4:12	No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
2Jn 1:5	And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.

How can this happen?

I asked my wife to share a testimony:

One of the wonderful things in my life is that I love and feel loved by the ladies in my Sunday school class. Not only do I love them....I'm crazy about them and at the risk of sounding full of myself, I think they're pretty ga-ga about me too!

The thing is, I haven't always felt that way. Same ladies over the past few years, but very different feelings. I have been a part of this class for four years, but it took close to two years before I felt a close bond with most of them. You want to know what made the difference between just being a part of something and feeling community? Feeling like a family? Spending time with them. And it's not JUST spending time with them that made the difference. It is what we talk about and share during that time that builds that "girlfriend" kind of love. It all started when someone in our group had a wonderful idea. The idea went like this..."Let's all get together for lunch this month and bring a gift for all of the gals who have birthdays during that month." We all liked the idea and showed up for lunch - I think there were 8 of us-we've been doing it ever since.

During those times together we've found out that one of our friends lost two husbands in tragic accidents, we've prayed with one of our pals whose son was in a horrible accident while serving in the military - that same friend lost her mother who she was very close to. We prayed for her and were sad with her. Our group truly knows what it means to bear one another's burdens. One in our group has grown children who haven't spoken to her in years. All of us who are mothers (and not all of us are) grieve with her and do our best to be there for her as friends who understand. This same friend just lost her sister after taking care of her during her last days. We've had financial struggles, job changes, and sickness, but we've also had celebrations and happy times to share. There is nothing like cheering with a friend when they or someone in their family has experienced victory. When you've been praying for them, it's your victory too!

For me, it's pretty easy to figure out. You want to love and be loved by those in your small group? Make spending time with them a priority. I know you are busy, so am I, but you'll figure out a way to make it happen if you really want to. I guarantee it is an investment worth making. You'll grow to love 'em and think they're "all that". Who knows? They might just think the same of you!

Survey says. . .

How to create close personal friends in the group. Here are a few more findings we discovered as we drilled down deeper into the data:

Home groups tended to do better and making people feel loved than did on campus groups.
Size of the group didn't matter a lot one way or the other.
Discussion groups felt loved more often than lecture-oriented groups.
This was surprising. Groups with practical teaching were more likely to feel loved by the people in the group--by a huge margin. Those in practical classes were two and a half times more likely to feel loved as compared with those in content-oriented classes.
Groups with accountability were more likely to feel loved than those who didn't have accountability.
Groups that were open and honest and encouraged transparency were over three time as likely to feel loved by the group.
Groups that regularly participate in conversational prayer are twice as likely to feel loved by the people in the group.
Groups with more activities were more likely to feel loved by the people in the group.
Here is a no brainer. People with lots of friends were more likely to feel loved by the people in the group, by a margin of two and a half times!
Growing groups were more likely to report feeling loved by the people in the group. (Or, is it the other way around; we can never be sure what causes what.) It may be that groups were people feel loved are more likely to be growing. All we know for sure is that feeling loved and growth tend to go together. The opposite is also true. People are not as likely to feel loved in a group that is not growing.
Where people felt loved by the teacher, they are (nearly) seven times more likely to feel loved by the people in the group. This was, by far and away, the biggest differentiating factor we discovered.
Having attended a group a long time tends to make us feel more loved by the people in the group, but only marginally so.

Summary: if you want to create a group where people feel loved, concentrate on the following: plan lots of group activities, create an atmosphere of openness and honesty, pray together in conversational prayer, and love the group yourself.

Groups that worship together are 86% more likely to be spiritually vibrant

2009-08-26T02:37:00.001-06:00

Rick Warren taught us there are five purposes of the church and five purposes for our lives. They key to life and the key to church is to keep these purposes in balance. Do not emphasize one at the expense of another.

You might be surprised to learn that everyone does not agree on the whole balance thing. (You might also be surprised by this. I heard and early teaching by Rick--back when his church was small, like five or ten thousand--and he taught about the four purposes of the church. He didn't add fellowship in until later.)

I have heard Bill Hybels say we need to give a disproportionate amount of time an attention to one purpose--evangelism. He says balance does not work. They try to be unbalanced in favor of evangelism. www.willowcreek.com

Steve Sjogren doesn't believe in balance either. He believes that the purpose of service can be the driver for all the rest. Servant evangelism, he calls it. Service drives the evangelism which gets people in the church where they can be disciples, worship and fellowship. Service drives the train. http://www.servantevangelism.com

From one perspective, you could argue that my plan--the double your class through hospitality plan -- is a fellowship-driven plan. Fellowship drives people into groups where they are saved, discipled, worship and serve.

If I understand John Macarthur's philosophy of ministry, he is all about discipleship through hour-long expository sermons. This is equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. The saints are equipped, the service gets done, the evangelism gets done, worship and fellowship get done. Discipleship drives everything else. http://www.gty.org

Jack Hayford teaches we ought to emphasize one purpose above the rest as well, but he chooses a different purpose--not fellowship, not service, not evangelism, not discipleship but worship. Worship is the key driving purpose that raises the tent for all the others to work under.

What do you think? Should we:

Keep the purposes balanced? (Rick Warren)
Emphasize evangelism above the rest? (Bill Hybels)
Emphasize service above the rest? (Steve Sjogren)
Emphasize fellowship above the rest?
Emphasize discipleship above the rest? (John Macarthur)
Emphasize worship above the rest? (Jack Hayford)

You might be surprised by my answer: I'd give the nod to putting worship slightly above the rest. It is one of the reasons we start every conference with worship. Why?

The Bible says it is fitting. It is just right. It is fitting that the upright would praise Him.
Jesus said that if He is lifted up, He will draw all men unto himself. Lifting up seems and obvious allusion to worship. This is the message of Sally Morgenthaler in Worship Evangelism. There is something inherently attractive to the world to see a people enthusiastically adoring God.
We are taught that we get close to God through worship. Isn't Christian living all about getting close to God? What is discipleship if it is not learning to live close to God? Psalms teaches that we enter his gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. We might say, "We get into God's neighborhood with thanksgiving and into His living room with praise." We get into God's are code with thanksgiving and up close and personal in praise.
Praise helps us to get the Lordship issue right. Christian living is centrally about who is boss, who is Lord. Worship helps to clear our thinking about this. As we sing, "I exalt you!" we are reminded that He is God and I am not. Discipleship is all about learning to live under the Lordship of Christ. Worship helps us with that.
Worship builds fellowship. There is something about the common experience of exalting our one God together that makes us feel closer together. We cannot all get closer to God without also getting closer to each other.
Jehoshaphat demonstrates the importance of worship in one of my favorite Old Testament stories. He faces his enemy with the choir leading the army. The enemy is defeated. Gotta love that story. Here is a great line: "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. Love it.
Worship is just a wonderful experience. Worship at its best is joyful worship. Piper: "He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." You love to worship, don't you? It is, for me, more fun than Six Flags. If there were not any redeeming, noble quality about worship, I'd still want to worship because it is so much fun.

Worship creates spiritually vibrant people . Groups that regularly worship together are almost twice as likely (86%) to be spiritually vibrant when compared with those who don't worship together.

By the way, worship also correlates positively to growth. Groups that worship together are more likely to grow:

And here is some good news. It is easier than it has ever been for a small group to worship together. Used to be, you had to have musicians--someone who could play the piano or guitar or something. Although that is still the preferred approach--nothing like live musicians--we have good alternatives that we can use in the absence of good live musicians.

A simple and easy way is just to bring in a boom box and crank it up. Let me say a word about volume. Volume matters, and more is generally better than less. Having said that, it can be over done. Unless you are teaching youth, you probably don't want it rock-concert loud. But, you do want it piano-and-organ-and-full-orchestra-and-choir-and-full-auditorium-singing-loudly-loud. You want it loud enough that people can't hear themselves. If people can hear themselves sing, they won't sing.

I have experienced this quite commonly in my seminars. We generally start with one worship song. Occasionally I have brought my guitar, but, honestly, although I enjoy playing, it is more worshipful if I leave it home. A good live musician is better than canned music, but in my case, canned music is better.

I use some wonderful DVDs from IWorship. (Technically, I use the MPEG version. This way, you load them all up on your hard drive and you can play any songs in any order, and you don't have to lug DVDs around. See http://www.worshipmusic.com/30310.html ) Often, I am not in control of the volume--the sound guy is. Usually they have someone with some musical sense and he or she will get it about right. But, sometimes it is too soft and people just don't sing. Or, some young guy is back there and cranks that baby up and. . . whoa! It is not worshipful; it is just irritating. More irritating to the older people in the crowd than for me. I have seen them hold their fingers to their ears to block the sound. Not a good sign. A time or two, I have had them walk out. REALLY not a good sign.

Still, let me emphasize, nine times out of ten if the volume is wrong, it is wrong on the side of too quiet, not too loud. Let me say one last time: volume matters. It matters a lot.

Musical style matters too. One musical style is no better or worse than any other musical style. it is a rather egotistical thing when someone refers to a particular style of music as, "church music," "spiritual music," or, "God's music." To suggest a particular style of music enjoyed by a particular group of people located in a particular geographical location at a particular time in history is special to God and better than music in Africa or South America or music enjoyed five hundred years ago or five hundred years from now is the height of egotism. The music I like is God's music and the music you like is suspect. Please!

Musical style matters. Some music tunes my heart to sing His praise. Other music makes me laugh. Other music makes me cry. Some music bores me. Some music angers me. Some music makes me want to scream. Style matters.

Style is not the point. The question is not, "what style is best?" But, "How can we lead these people to worship God? What style will help us get these people to God." Whatever style will do that is a good style.

Quality matters. It is easier to worship God with a piano that is in tune than it is to worship God when the piano is out of tune. It is easier to worship God when the musician knows what they are doing. Look it up; the bible speaks of skilled musicians. Not just musicians with a good heart; skilled musicians. This is why, in my case, I play a video rather than play my guitar and sing.

The worship is going to go a little better with a big, bright, projector and a beefy sound system than it will on a nineteen inch TV with a three inch speaker. I understand there are limits to the quality we can provide. Do the best you can do. Quality matters.

Of course, one thing matters more than all issues of quality: heart. I have a friend, David Delgado who is a fantastic worship leader. Here is how I would grade his skills:

Singing B+
Guitar playing B+
Piano A-
Worship leadership A+++

It is all about heart. I know a hundred guys who can sing better and play better, but they can't bring a crowd to God like David can. It is a gift-a gift that is nurtured and cultivated, but a gift. www.daviddelgado.com

One more thing. Don't limit your worship to group time. Encourage people to live a a lifestyle. Encourage them to do what I do sometimes on Sunday mornings. Get up an hour early, pop in an IWorship DVD. Crank it up loud. Spend an hour with God worshipping before the worship service. Encourage people to listen to worship music as they drive. Invite them to get a guitar and learn to play it. Lead people to love worshipping God.

We will spend all eternity in worship. Let's get to practicing.

How to keep the next generation in church.

2009-08-24T23:30:00.006-06:00

The latest research indicates that 70% of the kids who grow up in our youth groups are not staying in church. Project that out for about ten years and we have disaster.

Based on data from Essential Church, the trend looks like this:

For a free sample of the book, see http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_PDF_Rainers_Essential_Church_Sample.pdf

Another good book on the subject is Ed Stetzer's Lost and Found.

Let's look at it more personally. My oldest son graduated from High School in 2004. He walked across the stage at church at the recognition ceremony along with 20 or so of his classmates. Most of them had been very active in youth group. Very few of them are active in church today. In fact, my son may be the only one.

If you are in the mood for a good depression, do the math at your church. Dig up the list of the kids that graduated five years ago. See if you can figure out how many of them are in church on Sunday. If you are average, the number will be about 70% have dropped out. Whatever the exact number is, it is depressing.

A lot of external reasons are given for this--reasons that have to do with the culture and technology and this and that. I'd like to look at it from a different perspective, taking Average Baptist Church as an example. This is not a mega church, but it is big enough to have several staff, including a full time Youth minister.

Someone said once that your life is perfectly designed to get the results you are currently getting. This is just another way of saying you reap what you sow. It applies to us as individuals, and it applies to churches. Your church is perfectly organized to get the results you are currently getting. If you keep doing what you been doing you will keep getting what you been getting.

I'd guess Average Baptist Church spends $100,000 or more a year on youth. They have a full time Youth minister and a couple of interns. In addition to this, there appears to be a generous programming budget that goes to buy decent gear for the music program, literature, subsidize camp fees, pizza, supplies and all the rest. I'd be shocked if the total was not somewhere north of $100K a year.

This $100K creates a great youth program. No complaints whatsoever. They have great Sunday School, great teaching and music on Sunday night and Wednesday night. Camps. Retreats. Personal discipling by the youth minister and interns. It is all 5-star.

Until they graduate. Then, it pretty much fizzles to nothing. Pennies, instead of dollars are spent on college ministry. And we wonder why they don't come. This is not rocket science. Our behavior is perfectly designed to get the results we are now getting.

If this sounds like your church, here is a thought. Take about a third of resources you spend on youth and spend it on young adults.

Comments? http://joshhunt.blogspot.com/

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How to create spiritually vibrant people, part 3

2009-08-21T16:17:00.001-06:00

I read these verses in my quiet time this morning

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. Ephesians 4:16 (NIV)
My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, Colossians 2:2 (NIV)
He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Colossians 2:19 (NIV)

What do these verse have in common? I have put the words in bold. These words translate one Greek word: SUMBIBAZO. Gotta love the sound of that word. Say it three times out loud. SUMBIBAZO. SUMBIBAZO. SUMBIBAZO.

The word means to be connected. What these verse tell us is we only grow as we are connected. We don't grow, can't grow alone. We grow as we are connected together. John MacArthur comments on this word's usage in Ephesians 4.16:

The power for being equipped and matured into lovingly authentic proclaimers is not in believers themselves, in their leaders, or in church structure. The Body receives its authority, direction, and power as it grows "up in all aspects into... Christ," from whom the whole body [is] fitted and held together. The two present passive participles that these phrases translate are synonymous and are meant to express that the close, tight, compacted correlation of function in the Body as an organism is the result of Christ's power. That does not negate the efforts of believers, as proved by the phrases by that which every joint supplies and according to the proper working of each individual part. Each of these phrases is extremely significant in conveying truth about the function of the Body. Christ holds the Body together and makes it function by that which every joint supplies. That is to say, the joints are points of contrast, the joining together or union where the spiritual supply, resources, and gifts of the Holy Spirit pass from one member to another, providing the flow of ministry that produces growth.

The proper working of each individual part recalls the importance of each believer's gift (v. 7; cf. 1 Cor. 12:12-27). The growth of the church is not a result of clever methods but of every member of the Body fully using his spiritual gift in close contact with other believers. Christ is the source of the life and power and growth of the church, which He facilitates through each believer's gifts and mutual ministry in joints touching other believers. The power in the church flows from the Lord through individual believers and relationships between believers.

Where His people have close relationships of genuine spiritual ministry, God works; and where they are not intimate with each other and faithful with their gifts, He cannot work. He does not look for creativity, ingenuity, or cleverness but for willing and loving obedience. The physical body functions properly only as each member in union with every other member responds to the direction of the head to do exactly what it was designed to do. -- MacArthur New Testament Commentary, The - MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Ephesians.

Only connected people grow. We would get this straight every time if someone were to say to us, "I have a vibrant relationship with God. Me and Jesus go golfing every Sunday morning." We might quote the familiar passage, Hebrews 10.24 that speaks to the importance of not neglecting to meet together. I want to misquote this verse to make a point. See if you can catch me. Misquote of Hebrew 10.24 - 25

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. ⁽²⁵⁾Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us meet together and sit in straight rows and watch the same events happen on the same stage--and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV)

Here is the real verse. See the difference?

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. ⁽²⁵⁾Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV)

This verse is not a command to come to church as we normally think of church. It is a command to encourage one another. Encourage one another means I encourage you AND you encourage me. It is a participatory meeting. It is not sit in straight rows and watch the same events together. If you are not encouraging and being encouraged Hebrews 10.24 - 25 is not happening. The verse not to let that happen.

Andy Stanley says it this way, "Growth happens in a circle."

James 5.16a is instructive at this point: "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed."

I take a pretty broad definition of sins here. Somewhere it speaks of sin as everything that falls short of God's glorious ideal. Everything that is not glorious and ideal is sin. That is quite a bit in my life, how about you? Confess means to talk about it. Get it out in the open. Admit it. Come clean. You don't have it all together. Your life is a bit of a mess and so is mine. We are all messy, just in different areas. No one has it all together.

This verse teaches us that we move a little closer to the goal (find healing) as we confess. Question: what healing comes to the person who talks to God and God alone about their sin?

Answer: none. We are promised forgiveness in 1 John 1.9. This verse has to do with healing.

As Rick Warren says it, "You are only as sick as your secrets."

Things in darkness don't grow. Get them out in the open sunlight and they thrive.

And now, we have the data to back this up. (Did we ever need anything more than the Word of God?)

Here was the statement: "The atmosphere in my group is honest and open and encourages transparency." Participants who agreed or strongly agreed with that statement were 69% more likely to be spiritually vibrant when compared with those who were neutral or disagreed with that statement.

If you want to create spiritually vibrant people, create an atmosphere that is open and honest and encourages transparency.

How to create an open and honest atmosphere

First, let's define what we mean. Balance is a good thing. There is a such a thing as too much information. What we are looking for is appropriate levels of openness and honesty, and opportunities to go deeper in other contexts.

How much openness and honesty is too much? When people start to feel uncomfortable. You are a reasonable person; you will know it when you see it. And, this is rarely the problem. Rarely is the problem too much openness and honesty. Most of the time the problem is not enough openness and honesty.

Too many groups spend too much time on theoretical and theological musings about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin when people in the group are dying with issues of depression, boredom, fatigue, relationship difficulties and so forth. Good groups talk about real issues and real life and the people are real with each other. We don't sit around and smile when we are dying on the inside.

Take the issue of giving for an example. Listen in the next time the subject comes up. You would think, from listening to the conversation, that everyone has been faithfully tithing for years. Then look at any number of sources of data. Look at information on national giving records. Divide your church's budget by the number of members. Do the math. A lot of us are not tithing--no where close.

But, rarely does anyone ever speak up and say, "I am really struggling in this area. I am not doing all I'd like to do and all I should do. Please pray for me." And, James 5.16 teaches that until that someone speaks up and confesses that sin to someone, it is not going to get a lot better. You are only as sick as your secrets.

So, how do we create an atmosphere of openness and honesty?

Answer #1: slowly.

In some areas of Christian growth, we do well to do what one old hymn writer said: plunge in today and be made complete. This is not one of those areas. You do well to wade in slowly. Gradually get a little more honest and open and see how the group reacts. Does anyone freak out? Do people know how to keep a confidence? Do they tend to pounce and try to fix, or do they relate and encourage? They may need some coaching on how this works.

Here is another thing. The sharing should be more or less balanced. If everyone in the group is sharing their secrets, there is not a lot risk of someone breaking a confidence. It is called equal vulnerability. I will keep your secret because I want you to keep mine. If one or two people are doing all the honesty, you will have problems.

Answer #2: with grace AND truth.

Grace says, "You failed; we understand. We love you. It doesn't make us love you one bit less.

Truth says: "We love you too much to leave this way. We are going to speak truth to you. If you keep this up, it could kill you. You could pay a price you don't want to pay. We admonish you: quite now. We will help any way we can."

John Ortberg tells the story of bearing his soul to a friend. He told his friend of all the hidden junk that he was so embarrassed about. it was so hard. He talked and talked, pealing back one layer after another. Finally when he was all finished, his friend looked him the the eye and said, "John, there has never been a time I loved you any more than I do right now." That is grace. We all need that. Not just from God, but from human representatives of God. Your class needs that and I challenge you to create an atmosphere where it can happen.

Answer #3: lead by example.

If you want them to open up, you open up. Tell what is really going on in your life. There is something that is magical about a group that is open and honest and real. But you must set the pace. You must open up if you want them to open up. Again, not too much. Appropriate openness.

Answer #4: monitor the groups reaction to honesty.

There is a tendency to want to pounce and fix. There is a tendency of six people to give simple platitudes about how they can easily do better if they will just decide to do so. Not to say some advice giving isn't occasionally a good thing--sometimes people want answers, not just Kleenex. Again, balance is in order. But, most groups err on the side of giving too much advice too quickly and not near enough sympathy and understanding. Sometimes, we don't want answers. We just want to have a safe place to open up and for people to be understanding.

Job's friends don't win a lot of prizes for friendship in my book. But, they did start out pretty well. Check this out:

When Job's three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. ⁽¹²⁾When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. ⁽¹³⁾Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. Job 2:11-13 (NIV)

That is brilliant. Did you see it. They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word. Brilliant. Sometimes you need that.

I remember one time I was going through a really difficult chapter of my life, and was having a very bad day. I was near-suicidal. My son came home and found me curled up in a fetal position in bed. It was the middle of the afternoon.

"Are you sick, Dad?"

"No. Not sick. I am just not having a very good day." [My life was not glorious and ideal.]

I will never forget what he did. How God imparted the wisdom to do this I will never know. This is the grace of God. He lay down beside me, put an arm around me and held me. He didn't move and he didn't say anything for half an hour or more. What could he say? He had the good sense to close his mouth and just hold me. I will never forget that day when my son held his daddy on a very bad day.

When someone speaks up and talks about a part of their life that is not all pretty and all together, you might need to do some coaching. You might say something like, "Now, guys, this is a tender moment and Jim has really taken a risk being honest with us. I want us to encourage him in any way the Spirit leads. Resist the urge to give advice that he hasn't necessarily asked for. Resist the pride of thinking you can fix a problem in three minutes that he has struggled with for years. Think about how you would want to be treated in this moment. Jim, I'd like to start by saying to you, 'Thank you for your honesty. We all struggle in different ways and to different degrees. This doesn't' make us love you any less--in fact, I think I speak for all of us--we have never loved you more than we do in this moment. We don't know all the answers. We have ideas you might think about, but we don't pretend to have all the answers. But, we want you to know we are going to walk you through this difficult time. We will pray for you and be there for you.'"

There is one more thing. It is not just about what happens in class. It is in, through, and around class. It is the little cluster of men that hang around afterwards. It is the group of ladies that decide not to bowl that last game so they can get some nachos and visit. It is lunch with a friend. Groups are not just about what happens in groups; they are also about the opportunities that groups create.

If you would create spiritually vibrant people, do all you can to create an atmosphere of appropriate openness, honesty, and transparency. Teach on it. Model it. Coach it.

Puzzling data regarding lecturing teachers

2009-08-21T13:27:00.002-06:00

Many of you know I am working on a new book on What Makes Groups Grow. I am puzzling just now over the data regarding teachers to lecture. Here is the puzzle:

Teachers who use all lecture were the second mostly likely group to be growing
Teachers who use all lecture were also the most likely group to be declining (by a wide margin)

I have my own theories as to why this is true. What do you make of it? How could the lecturing group be both likely to grow and likely to decline?

How to create spiritually vibrant people, part 2

2009-08-20T17:29:00.001-06:00

I read this verse in my quiet time this morning:

All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. Colossians 1:6 (NIV) [Emphasis added]

I take "growing" in this context to mean, "numerical growth." Growth that you can display on a graph. Paul was a numbers guy.

In the next paragraph Paul uses the same Greek word:

And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ⁽¹¹⁾being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ⁽¹²⁾giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. Colossians 1:10-12 (NIV) [Emphasis added]

The Colossians were growing numerically and Paul prayed that they grow in knowledge of God--we might say, "grow spiritually."

Question: do these normally go together, or not?

To hear some people talk, you would think they are necessarily separate. "We are not growing much numerically, but we sure are getting close to God and each other." Or, "We are not about numerical goals; God isn't into numbers. We just work on going deep with God." Or, "God has all the people he wants to have at that Bible Study."

The assumption behind these commonly heard statements is that numerical growth and spiritual growth are opposites of sorts. You can work on one or the other, but it is difficult to get both. The pursuit of one gets in the way of the pursuit of the other. It is hard to have both.

Turns out, this is not true. Groups that are growing numerically are 55% more likely to be in the high spiritual vibrancy group when compared with those that are not growing numerically. Spiritual growth and numerical growth normally go together. It is a rare thing that people are actually growing spiritually and the group is not growing numerically. More commonly, spiritual vibrancy and numerical growth go together.

For a group to say, "We are working on spiritual growth, not numerical growth" is like a football team saying, "We don't worry about the score; we just try to be good football players." Turns out, good football players and winning scores normally go together."

Imagine going to the bank to ask about your account. "I'd like to check my balance." "Oh, here at Friendly People National Bank we don't really care so much about numbers. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

Or, imagine you overdrew you account and complained to the bank because you have had a twenty year relationship. How do you think that would go over.

Imagine a weather man saying, "It is going to be nice tomorrow. I don't really know the temperature, because I don't do numbers." (At least he is honest!)

Imagine your son came home and you asked him how he did on the test. "I got some number right and some number wrong, but I don't really care about numbers, Dad."

I think it is one of Satan's greatest lies to suggest that numbers don't matter. You hear it all the time. "Well, we didn't have a very good crowd, but everyone was there that was supposed to be there." Really? God didn't want more people to hear the gospel, or be trained, or be taught the Bible? I don't think so.

If you would create really spiritually vibrant people, engage them on mission in pressing toward the goal of advancing the kingdom, reaching people for Christ and growing the church. We grow as we push against something. Growing is not just sitting around the room talking about the Bible. It is also doing. It is spiritual exercise. It is serving the Lord AND learning about God and talking to God.

There is another practice that contributes to spiritual vibrancy.

Conversational Prayer

I was a late-comer to the practice of reading. I remember bragging to my friend Bill that I was in the middle of my college years and I had never read a book outside of assigned reading in class. Bill's response jarred me, "That is so sad, Josh, you are cutting yourself off from all kinds of knowledge." I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right. (One of the reasons I believe in conversational teaching is my life has been radically changed like this through conversations.) Sense I knew nothing of books or authors, I asked for a suggestion. It is scary to think about this moment, because had Bill suggested a crummy book, I might have never discovered a love for reading. He didn't suggest a crummy book. He suggested what turned out to be a life-changing book: Rosalyn Rinker's Learning Conversational Prayer.

The concepts taught in conversational prayer have been a part of most of the groups I have lead ever sense. This simple practice has been the basis of some of the riches spiritual times I have had in my life. If you have not read Learning Conversational Prayer, run, don't walk to get a copy. And, here is some good news: I just checked; you can get a used copy on Amazon for $.03. You read that right, 3 cents. Why haven't you clicked yet?

Conversational prayer is, well, like a conversation. Like a conversation. . .

You don't go around the room and pray; you just pray one person at a time, in random order.
You can pray as often as you like or not at all.
Like a good conversation, there is balance but not symmetry in the participation. In other words, everyone is participating in a more or less balance way, but it is not like everyone is praying for exactly two minutes each.
Some won't pray at all. That is fine. Just like in a conversation, some people prefer to listen more than talk. I have never been one of those people.
If two people start praying at the same time, you do what you do in a conversation. One of you backs off. It is slightly awkward, but you get through it--just like in a conversation.
The prayer tends to stay on topic, and then gradually shift to another. Say we start praying about an upcoming marriage retreat. Two or three or four people pray about that. Then there is a pause. People sense that we are finished talking (praying) about that. So, someone shifts the conversation to something else. Perhaps a couple more offer a sentence or two about that. Then the conversation with God moves on to something else.
Just like a conversation, there is often short periods of silence. I usually warn people about that: "Don't be afraid of the silence. Just talk to God. Or just be still and know that He is God." We are so seldom still. We are so seldom quiet. Don't you love the verse that says, "Let all the earth keep silent before Him." We seldom obey that command.
One person is assigned to wrap things up. This could be the group leader, or could be someone else.
Try to minimize the time you spend sharing prayer requests. (If I remember right, Rinker suggests you don't spend ANY time in sharing prayer requests; just dive in to praying. Don't tell each other about the requests, just tell God, and let others listen.) As in many areas of life, balance is a good thing. I say, "minimize" the time you spend in prayer requests. Many groups spend far more time talking about prayer than they spend actually praying. Better to just dive into prayer, as Rinker suggests. But, I think there are some times when a prayer requests requires a little explanation. So, you might want to spend some time explaining things that need explaining.

For more on conversational prayer, you might look at a previous article I wrote here http://www.joshhunt.com/mail33.htm Better yet, read the book--it is three cents! (Plus shipping, of course.)

Question: does conversational prayer help to produce spiritually vibrant people? Turns out it does. Groups that participate in conversational prayer are 63% more likely to be spiritually vibrant compared with those who don't participate regularly in conversational prayer. Conversational prayer helps produce spiritually vibrant people. But, that is not all it does.

Good things often come together, and a host of other good things come with groups that participate in conversational prayer. They are more likely to have a atmosphere that is positive and uplifting. They are more likely to report accountability around having a quiet time. They worship more often in their groups. The atmosphere is open and honest and encourages transparency. They are more likely to have strong friendships in the group. They are more likely to be growing numerically. They are more likely to feel loved by both the teacher and the group. In every way a group can be better, conversational prayer will tend to make it better.

Why not give conversational prayer a try in this week's Bible Study group?

How to create spiritually vibrant people

2009-08-19T14:54:00.001-06:00

I have just completed a survey of 1036 people aimed at discovering what creates spiritually vibrant people. This is the first of several articles reporting the results.

This survey is a follow-up to another survey I did on what makes groups group. The #1 and #2 thing that corresponded to a high growth rate were spiritual vibrancy and faith (which appear to be related).

This puts to rest the myth, by the way, that you sometimes hear: "Well, we are not growing numerically, and God doesn't care about numbers--( am not sure where that idea came from)--but we sure are growing deep with God." Turns out, this is usually NOT the case. Numerical growth and spiritually vibrancy are normally found together.

First, I'd like to report on the things that did not matter very much. Then, we will move up the scale toward those things that mattered the most

Things that didn't matter all that much in creating spiritually vibrant people

Teaching style didn't matter very much. I have a bias--a strong bias--in favor of discussion oriented groups. To me, they are just much more interesting. Maybe I have sat in on too many boring lectures. Maybe I just like to talk. Maybe I am a little ADD and just can't sit still and listen. I am not sure why, but I strongly prefer discussion oriented groups. I believe in them so much that I write four small group lessons a week that consist of about 20 questions per lesson. See www.joshhunt.com/lessons.htm I would argue that I have written more lessons, and more questions about the Bible than anyone else alive (Recently, I started including answers to the questions in the form of footnotes from some of the great commentaries out there.) Anyway, I would like to report that discussion oriented groups create greatly more spiritually vibrant people than do lecture oriented groups. I'd like to report that discussion oriented groups are better in every way. I 'd like to report that discussion oriented groups rule the world! I'd like to report that, but the facts don't support it. There was NO DIFFERENCE in the spiritual vibrancy of discussion oriented groups compare with lecture oriented groups.

Teaching style did influence other things. For example, teachers who use at least some discussion were twice as likely to be growing numerically, compared with those who use all, or almost all lecture. It is hard to grow a class using the lecture method. Discussion groups were almost twice as likely to produce people who felt loved by the people in the group and to have close personal friends in the group. Discussion groups were nearly three times as likely to strongly agree with this statement: "The atmosphere in my group is honest and open and encourages transparency." They are five times as likely to provide accountability around having a quiet time.

There are always more questions I wished I had asked. (I have a follow up survey at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/49850/follow-up-teacher-survey) One question I wish I had asked was about the quality of the lesson. And, I'd like to ask the question of the participants, not the teachers. Question: how good is this lecture? I am telling you, I have heard a lot of bad ones. Before you adopt the method of lecturing 100% of the time, make sure you are good--really good. Lectures are like violin playing. When you are good, you are good, but when it is bad, it is really bad. If you would like to help me with a participant's survey, send your participants to this address: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/49862/participants-survey

How long have you you been in this group? No real big surprise here, but how long you have been in a particular group did not tend to predict spiritual vibrancy. It would be nice to report that the longer you are in the group, the more likely you are to be spiritually vibrant. Sadly, this is not the case.

Home group or on campus group? It is clear that God is doing a work in a home group movement in our country. I remember when Cho's book came out on cell groups. I wondered, "Would home cells ever become popular in America?" Clearly, that day has come. I just read two books by two of the leading spokesmen for church growth today--Nelson Searcy of The Journey (you know it is a cool church when it starts with "The") in New York City, and Larry Osborn, Pastor of North Coast Church, based out of Vista, CA and a leading example of the growing multi-site movement. (I think the multi-site movement will be the biggest change in church during my life-time.) Both of these writers, along with Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Ed Young Jr. (NOT Ed Young Sr.) recommend home groups. There is clearly a growing movement. But, home groups were only a little (26%) more likely to report high spiritual vibrancy as compared with on-campus, Sunday School style groups. The highest level of spiritual vibrancy was reported by those who attended BOTH home groups AND Sunday School style groups.

There is a tendency in many arenas of life to get stuck in an either/or mode of thinking. Mac or PC? Coke or Pepsi? McDonalds or Burger King? Often times, both is a better answer. You sometimes hear people say, "People feel more comfortable coming to a home group than an on campus group." Yeah? Why then do churches with on campus groups nearly always have two or three times the percentage of their worship service in groups when compared with the percentage that home group churches have in groups?

Or, we have Sunday School churches that think they have the only way. It is a wonderful word: both. My favorite way to do groups is as have seen practiced in only a few churches. "We have groups. Lots of groups. Lots of choices. Big. Little. Old. Young. On campus. Home groups. Short term. On going. We have lots of groups. Get in one. Get in more than one if you like, but get in at least one. They are all good."

Level of involvement. I reported on a survey once and had a participant say to me, "I disagree; I don't like that." Well, I might not like it either, but this is how people answer the question. Highly active people were only marginally more likely to report high spiritual vibrancy as compared with those who are not as active. (30%)

This is congruent with George Barna's research reported in the book The Revolutionaries. He reports that there is a large and growing movement of people who are deeply committed to God, but not deeply committed to churches as we traditionally think of them. They may be involved in house churches, or some other expression of Christian community, but they are not deeply involved in traditional church.

This is also corroborated with Willowcreek's Reveal Study. I quote from page 33, "Involvement in church activities does not predict or drive long-term spiritual growth. Personal spiritual disciplines -- tithing, evangelism, serving, quiet time, etc does tend to predict spiritual growth, but church attendance doesn't. I don't like it either, but that is what the data indicates.

One other insight coming out of the Reveal study. The study revealed that church involvement does predict spiritual growth in the early stages of growth. For seekers and new Christians to be heavily involved in church predicts their growth in the faith. But, as time goes along, church activity is less important and personal disciplines are more important.

Let's consider this passage: "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." Hebrews 5:12-14 (NIV) Implication: we ought to, at some point, get past needing someone to teach us the elementary truths of God.

There may be more to it than this, but it occurs to me that when you are eating milk, someone else is feeding you. When you get to eating meat, you are feeding yourself. How do we get people to feed themselves? Perhaps accountability will help. Sorry, wrong answer. (We will get to what does help in the next article.)

Accountability: does anyone every ask you about having a quiet time? You might think this would matter a lot. I thought it would matter quite a bit. I wanted it to matter. But, facts are, it only matters a little. Groups that ask each other about whether they have a quiet time are 30% more likely to report high levels of spiritual vibrancy, when compared with those who don't ask about having a quiet time.

Thirty percent is nothing to sneeze at, and suggests it is not a bad idea to regularly ask your group, "How are you doing these days in terms of your time alone with God." We know from the Reveal study, (and common sense agrees), if we can get people starting their day with the Bible on their lap we have some chance of creating mature disciples. Conversely, I have no concept of what it means to live the Christian life other than to spend time regularly in prayer and in the Word.

Do you have close personal friends in the group? People who strongly agree with this statement were only 30% more likely to report high levels of spiritual vibrancy. This question, has an interesting twist, however. I also asked if they felt loved by the people in the group. This, as it turns out made a huge difference. People who felt loved by the people in the group were more than twice as likely (111%) to report high levels of spiritual vibrancy compared with those who didn't feel loved by the people in the group. Having a lot of close friends doesn't matter all that much; feeling loved matters a lot.

We must conclude that "feeling loved" and "feeling close" are not the same thing. It is possible to feel the people in my group care about me, but, I am not all that close to them. 27% of those who said they don't have close friends in the group strongly agreed with the statement, "I feel loved by the people in my group." Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

What is your role in the group, teacher or participant? Teachers were 33% more likely to report high levels of spiritual vibrancy compared with those they lead. Looks like we have the right people leading.

How many outside activities does your class do? Groups that have lots of parties and activities are 43% more likely to be spiritually vibrant. They are also about twice as likely (94%) to be growing. Having lots of parties and activities helps you grow your group both numerically AND in terms of spiritually vibrancy.

Parties help in other ways. Groups that have lots of parties (one a month or more) are 65% more likely to report that the group is "honest and open and encourages transparency." I think that is a good thing. Groups that have lots of parties are 79% more likely to strongly agree with the statement, "I have close personal friends in the group." Groups with lots of parties are 42% more likely to feel loved by the people in the group and 55% more likely to feel loved by the teacher. Most anything that is good about the class gets better with lots of parties.

I am reading Seth God's new book Tribes. Let me quote a section from page 52:

The first thing a leader can focus on is the act of tightening the tribe.

It is tempting to make the tribe bigger, to get more members, to spread the word. This pales, however when juxtaposed with the effects of a tighter tribe. A tribe that communicates more quickly, with alacrity and emotion is a tribe that thrives.

A tighter tribe is more likely to hear its leader, and more likely still to coordinate action and ideas across members of the tribe.

Two observations. First, this seems to be exactly the way Jesus operated. He seemed to have a kind of gravitational pull in the direction of tightening his tribe (the disciples). He often left the masses to be with the tribe. As time went on, he seemed to spend more and more time with the tribe. Robert Coleman wrote about this in the classic, Master Plan of Evangelism. (If you have not read it, run, don't walk to get and read a copy.)

Second observation: This is exactly the opposite of the way most churches operate. They are all about trying to get the tribe bigger. We tend to be enamored with quantity; Jesus was enamored with quality.

Teacher cares about me personally. Those who strongly agreed with this statement were 47% more likely to be spiritually vibrant compared with those who didn't strongly agree with that statement. Again, recall that being loved by the members of the group make a huge difference as well. Turns out the old adage is true: people don't care what you know till they know that you care.

Well, those are the things that didn't matter all that much; next week we will get into the things that mattered a lot.

If you want to peak ahead, that article will be at www.joshhunt.com/mail283.htm It is a work in progress.

What makes groups grow, part 6

2009-08-17T09:01:00.000-06:00

What is the one factor trumps everything else by a factor of eleven?

Faith.

Growing classes are eleven times more likely to believe they will be growing than are non-growing classes. Eleven times.

Again, the question of cause and effect comes into play. Do growing classes believe they will be growing in the future because they are growing now? Does the growth cause the belief? Or, does the faith cause the growth? Are they growing because they expected to grow? Truth be told, we can't be sure, but I'd say there was some of both.

If you want to grow your class, start with a strong belief--an expectation that you can grow your class. If you want to develop that belief, get your class growing now. Nothing like seeing some progress that starts to build your faith.

There is a foundational biblical principle at work here. Faith proceeds almost everything. Jesus said, "it will done for you according to our faith." Indeed. We sometimes hear people say, "I bet he never believed THAT would happen." That may be true occasionally, but more often I would guess it is not. More often he (or she) saw it happen because he believed it would.

This story is told of Mrs. Disney on they day Disney World opened in Orlando. She was interviewed by Walter Cronkite. Her husband had passed away and never got to see the opening of the magic kingdom. Lamenting this, Walter Cronkite said to Mrs. Disney, "Isn't it ashamed Walt never got to see this!" Her reply was quick: "He did; that is why it is here."

Indeed. Everything that exists exists because someone saw it first. Can you see your class growing? Can you see your class doubling? Can you see a mighty army of God raised up to double microcosms of the church growing and dividing, growing and dividing, growing and dividing?

If you, you might run over to http://sundayschool.ning.com/ There you will find dozens of videos of teachers who have doubled their classes every two years or less. You will get the idea, after watching a dozen of so of those, "I can do that!" And, you can. But you must believe.

You sometimes hear people say, "I will believe it when I see it." Usually, the opposite is true. We see it when we believe it.

Late in his life, Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators wrote a brief tract on the subject that began like this:

( http://www.discipleshiplibrary.com/pdfs/AA065.pdf )

What is the need of the hour? That depends upon the person who is thinking about it. If I’m walking along the street and see a beggar with a tin cup, what’s the need of the hour? A dime. If a woman is being taken to the hospital, what’s the need of the hour? A doctor.

But in Christian work, what is the need of the hour? I started to list the things that we often feel are the need - those things which if supplied, would end our troubles.

Some say, "Well, if I just had a larger staff ..." Would more staff be the answer? Today many a minister would like to have an assistant and many a mission would like to have more missionaries. The cry of returned missionaries is always for more men and women to fill up the ranks - to them, the need of the hour.

Others say, "We don’t need more workers, but if we had better facilities ... if we just had more office space and more buildings and bigger grounds and a base of operation ... if we had a place like Glen Eyrie ... then we could do the job."

In certain areas of the world they say it’s communications we lack, or better transportation, or better means to take care of health. The need of the hour on many a mission field is merely a radio. But if you get that radio, then there’s another need followed by something else and something else. Many feel it is literature. I hear that in my travels all over the world, "We just lack literature."

I know of people today who are saying, "If we could just get into a certain place." For years people have been on the borders of Nepal saying, "If we could just get in." To them the need of the hour is an open door into Nepal. Right now hundreds of people are saying, "If we could just get into China." The Bible says, "My God shall supply all your needs ... " If the need were an open door into China, why doesn’t God open it? "These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth ... I have set before thee an open door."

Paul found closed doors, but closed doors to him weren’t the problem. I believe those closed doors were used of God to show him the open doors he was to go through next. If God wanted to put His hand over the great country of China tonight, He could open the door in forty-eight hours.

Some say, "We need time. If we just had more time ... " Others say, "If I just weren’t so old, if I were young again." People have said to me, "Daws, if I had known when I was twenty years old what I know now, I could have done a hundred times more for the Lord. Why didn’t I?"

Often the biggest need of the hour seems to be money. "If we just had money ... That’s the answer to a larger staff, more facilities, literature, communications and transportation ... If we just had money."

What is the need of the hour? Frankly, I don’t believe it is any of these. I am convinced that the God of the universe is in control and He will supply all of these needs in His own way and in His own time, all else being right.

Let me tell you what I believe the need of the hour is. Maybe I should call it the answer to the need of the hour. I believe it is an army of soldiers, dedicated to Jesus Christ, who believe not only that He is God, but that He can fulfill every promise He has ever made, and that there isn’t anything too hard for Him.

It is still the need of the hour: an army of soldiers, totally dedicated to Jesus Christ and the advancement of His kingdom, who believe that God is God and he can fulfill every promise he ever made and there isn't anything too hard for Him. Give us an army like that and we can turn the world upside down through Christ who strengthens us.

What Makes Groups Grow, part 5

2009-08-15T21:02:00.000-06:00

What is the one quality that trumps everything we have talked about so far?

What one quality is more important than teaching skill or how many people you have involved, or visitation, or giving Friday nights to Jesus or organizational ability or anything else?

Spiritual Vibrancy.

Spiritual vibrancy trumps just about everything else. As Gomer Pile used to say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

Jesus said it would be true. Here is a verse I am meditating on and re-memorizing (you have to re-memorize after 50!): "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:5 (NIV)

If you remain in Christ you will bear much fruit. You can take it to the bank. That is the promise of God.

What causes what?

One of the issues with statistics is that it cannot prove cause. It can only prove that two things occur together. You can never be sure which one caused the other. Does spiritual vibrancy cause growth, or does growth cause spiritual vibrancy? We can't be sure. We just know they occur together. Spiritually vibrant people tend to grow class and people who grow classes tend to be spiritually vibrant.

Confusion about cause and effect can be seen in our educational system. We know that high self-esteem and high SAT scores tend to go together. The tendency is to assume that the high self-esteem caused the high SAT scores. So we want to do all we can to protect and nurture high self-esteem. So, we do things like tell little Johnny he is doing great when he is not. We don't do things like tell him the answer is wrong when it clearly is. 2 + 2 = 5 is not a good try. It is just wrong. But we do this kind of thing in the name of building self esteem because we know that high self-esteem produces high SAT scores.

But, what if we got it all wrong? What if it is actually the other way around? Maybe it is the high SAT scores--and general confidence that you can read the newspaper at age 16--that produces high self-esteem. If we start with that assumption, what kind of action might that assumption produce? Smarter kids with higher self-esteem would be my guess.

So, what causes what in this case--does spiritual vibrancy cause growth, or does growth cause spiritual vibrancy?

My answer: both.

It is a loop, what some have called a self-reinforcing cycle. Spiritually vibrant people attract people. They joy of the Lord is their strength. People who have great joy in God have great energy for God and accomplish great things for God. There is a certain winsomeness about spiritually vibrant people.

Spiritually vibrant have the blessing of God on them. It is not about practical strategies and methods. It is about the blessing and power of God. Ultimately this is about God's work. And, although there is no indication that he blesses lousy methods, He is less likely to bless the spiritually lukewarm.

Spiritually vibrant people love living the Christian life. They love prayer and Bible reading and study and memorization and meditation. They love serving the Lord. They know their spiritual gifts and and are ministering near the sweet spot of their giftedness. They normally start the day with the Bible on the laps.

For all these reasons, spiritual vibrancy produces growth.

The opposite is also true.

Growth causes spiritual vibrancy

Jesus promised a special sense of His presence to those who engage with Him in the great commission. There is nothing like the thrill of the work. There is nothing like getting involved in the work of the ministry near the sweet spot of your giftedness.

This perspective is very different from the perspective of some that seem to think that the ultimate in life at its best is, leisure, pleasure or relaxation.

John Piper quotes a Reader's Digest articles that begins this way:

Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the North East five years ago. She was 59 and he was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, Where they cruise on their 30 ft trawler, play softball and collect shells.

For many, this looks like life at its best. Retire early while you are young and healthy. Move to Florida where it is always warm and sunny. Get a boat. Spend time on the beach collecting shells. Play softball.

Is anyone besides me bored just reading about it? Give me a mountain to climb (metaphorically speaking!), a race to run, a task to accomplish! That is exactly what God gives us. Look at what Paul said:

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (13) Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, (14) I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14 (NIV)

Paul admonished us to live such a life, and set an example for us to follow:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. 1 Cor 9:24-27 (NIV)

Late in his life, Paul declared that he had finished the race.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 2 Tim 4:7-8 (NIV)

Sounds like spiritual vibrancy to me. But, spiritual vibrancy is not obtained just with proper spiritual nutrition, just as physical vibrancy is not achieved through diet alone. Exercise, in both arenas is necessary.

Serving God is not just a necessary part of the Christian life because God needs servants. We need to serve. Serving is part of how we live a spiritually vibrant life.

Spiritual vibrancy and effective service go together. They reinforce each other in a wonderful cycle. Spiritual vibrant people have great energy from God. The thrill of the work feeds the vibrancy of their relationship with God.

This puts to rest a common myth. You sometimes here people say, "We are not growing numerically, but we are growing spiritually. We are going deep with God." This is rarely the case. People who go deep with God are following God in what God is doing. God is moving. He promises to be with us in a special way as we engage in the Great Commission with Him.

I want to be in that number.

You might not need a teacher to lead a group

2009-08-10T16:06:00.001-06:00

One of the things I am going to love about pastoring is the opportunity to experiment with ideas. I have a few ideas I have had for years and have never had the opportunity to experiment with them.

I am an idea guy. I never met an idea I didn't like. Ideas can change the world. I love a good idea.

I have had an idea about a leaderless group for years. Sunday night, I got to experiment with it. It went well.

Before I tell you about the specifics, think of the possibilities. The need of the hour in big churches and small, in country churches and city churches is always for more teachers and workers. What if we could do group life without teachers?

The number of groups we could start would be unlimited. People often ask me as I cast a vision for creating new groups: where do you get all the teachers? Good question. But, what if you didn't need teachers?

One other caveat. A group with a good teacher is better than a group with no teacher. But, I think you can have a good group with no teacher at all. Here is how it works.

I am leading a small group Bible study at our church on Sunday nights. (When worship attendance is below 30, pretty much everything is a small group!) Last night we tried something I have always wanted to try.

I passed around one of my lessons to everyone in the group. The old school way is to have the teacher alone read the questions and field the discussion. That is, the traditional way was for me to have a lesson and ask all the questions. This week, everyone had a lesson.

I started by reading the first question. Then, I asked the person to my right to ask question #2. They could answer it or not. The person next to them asked question #3 and so on around the room. Another good thing: I am confident being back in a small group every week is going to make my lessons even better. www.joshhunt.com/lessons.htm for details on that.

I asked my wife how she thought it went. "Not as well as when you are leading." That is good to hear. I have had a lot of experience leading groups. Hopefully, I could do it better than letting people who have never led to lead. I probed further.

"Don't compare it to me teaching. Compare it to every other class you have ever heard. How did that session compare with every other small group you have ever attended?" "It was better than average," she said. That was my evaluation as well. A teacher-less group was not as good as group with a skilled leader. But it was better--far better than a group with a bad leader.

My research indicates 40% of teachers self-describe themselves as being something less than a 4 or 5 star teacher (on a scale of 1 to 5). Notice I said this is self-described. There is a good deal or research that indicates that the people tend to describe themselves as above average. 90% of pastors, for example describe themselves as above average. For many of the teachers, the classroom experience would be just as good if the group led themselves by asking good questions.

But, the real potential, of course, has nothing to existing groups. It has everything to do with creating new groups. It is a whole lot easier to recruit new leaders of groups if they do not anticipate having to spend 4 or 5 hours on the lesson.

When I was on church staff before I started writing the lessons that I now publish online. I found that groups that used these lessons had far less resistance to starting new groups and finding leaders for those groups. Group members watch as the leaders went through a list of good questions. Something in their soul said, "I could do that." Thus, it was far easier to get new leaders when they new the question and answer leadership style.

Note one thing: I have been careful to call these teacher-less groups, not leaderless groups. You still need a leader. You need someone who is in charge. You need someone who feels responsible. You need someone who sees that the group gets organized and invites every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month.

It is something what multisite churches are learning. They don't have to have a preacher at every site--most of them don't, they are video venues. But, you do have to have a face with the place--a leader that is in charge.

This idea is still in the rough, but it seems promising enough that I wanted to pass it along to you. I will post this article on Facebook. I'd love to see your comments there. What? You are not my friend on Facebook? Please be my friend! www.facebook.com/joshhuntnm

What Makes Groups Grow, part 4

2009-08-06T18:27:00.000-06:00

For parts 1, 2,& 3, see:

#3 People skills

Teachers with good people skills were two and a half times (147%) more likely to be growing than those with bad people skills. People skills matter more than participation in visitation, how many parties you have or don't have, how you spend your time, what your purpose is, or how many people you have on your team helping you. If you have ever read a John Maxwell book on leadership you know this. Turns out, John Maxwell is right. People skills matter. It matters a lot.

What are good people skills?

It starts on the inside

If you want to get along well with people, it helps to like them. Really like them. Not pretend to like them. Not act like you like them. Really like them. Think kind thoughts about them. Think kindly of them. Cultivate a heart that loves them.

This attitude should be reflected toward Christians and non-christians. One of the reasons why many churches are not effective at reaching non-christians is that the Christians don't like the non-christians. They can tell. They can always tell.

A better outreach program is not going to fix this problem. We need a better heart. A heart that cares. A heart that is drawn to. A heart that wants to be with.

So, let me ask you: how do you feel about the people in your class? How do you feel about non-christians? Let's all pray that God would do a work in our heart that makes us drawn toward them, as He is drawn toward them.

Tone matters

Proverbs 15.1 says that a soft answer turns away wrath. Notice it doesn't say a right answer. It says a soft answer. Simple as it sounds, most of us would get along with people better if we just used a softer tone.

The opposite is also true. A loud, harsh, rude, shrill, ugly tone is going to bring bad results, even if you are thinking kind thoughts. The tone of your voice has just about as much to do with the quality of your relationships as any other single factor.

If you would get alone well with others, cultivate the habit of using a kind, gracious tone.

Boundaries

If you have not read Townsend and Cloud's book Boundaries, you need to do so. Read it.

Actually that tone is a violation of what I am trying to communicate. I would invite you to read it; it is a great read. But I invite, I don't order. You are you and I am me and I can't order you do to anything nor should I try. People don't like it when you don't respect their boundaries.

We need to ask; not assume. We need to invite; not order. We need to offer; not demand. We need to respect the fact that other people are other people. They are not extensions of us. We need to respect their boundaries.

Lack of planning on your part does not create an emergency on mine. A need on your part does not create an obligation within me. Your problems are your problems.

This principle has a myriad of implications, so go read the book! (How did that feel? Not so good, right?)

Overcome evil with good

Love covers a multitude of sin. If you are constantly being nice and courteous and thoughtful and complementary, and then you do something that irritates me, I can deal with it.

But, if you are constantly being rude or short or insensitive. . . the Proverbs speaks about how a constant dripping wears you down.

Constantly lavish people inside and out with kind, thoughtful words and deeds. When you do this, you build up a credit so that when you do mess up, people can deal with it.

Let God fill your tank

As you give to others, you can sometimes get drained. Let God fill your tank. Come to God each day and ask Him to fill you so you can give to others.

It is true in a marriage. Here is how it works. We are like to glasses of water. I pour into Missy and she pours back into me. We both fill each other up. But, there is a problem. There is a little spillage along the way. I try to pour into her but I don't quite get it right. She tries to pour into me.

But God. Those too words change everything, don't they? As each of us allows God to fill our tank we have plenty to give to others.

How full is your tank?

Keep learning

If people skills are as important as they are we ought to spend a good deal of time cultivating better people skills. We ought to make a life long habit of getting better and dealing with people. Teacher training ought to be largely about developing better people skills.

What Makes Groups Grow, part 3

2009-08-04T10:53:00.001-06:00

For parts 1 and 2, see:

Four things made it into the "this really matters" list. What does it take to make it into the "this really matters" list? I set the criteria at 100% difference between the bottom group and the top. The teachers who practice these practices were twice as likely (or more) to be doubling as the ones who were not practicing these things.

#1: Fellowship matters

I asked teachers how many fellowships they have. Now, if you have ever heard me speak or read anything I have written, you know the drill: Invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. I didn't actually ask about that. I didn't ask if the groups invited every member and every prospect; I just asked if they had a party. More specifically, I asked how many parties they have:

4. How many fellowships do you have a year?

0 - 4
5 - 8
9 or more

The group that has 9 or more fellowships a year is twice as likely (104%) to be growing compared with the group that has one fellowship a quarter or less. Double the number of parties; double the chance of growing.

Don't you love it when you are right? I have not been right on every one of these things. I have already reported on things that I thought would really matter that do not matter hardly at all, or do not matter very much. In this case, the data supports what I have been saying for years: groups that party together grow together.

How much better if groups follow the formula: invite every member and every prospect to every fellowship every month. But, the sheer practice of parties, whether or not we invite outsiders doubles our chances of doubling.

Truth is, this plan is as old as the Bible. Consider these verses:

Get into the habit of inviting guests home for dinner. Romans 12:13 (TLB)
Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 1 Peter 4:9 (NIV)
Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2 (NIV)
Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends. Luke 14:12a (NIV)

I had someone say to me after a conference recently, "What you are talking about is just doing what the Bible says."

Indeed.

Romans 12.13 says to form a habit. (This is Kenneth Taylor's way of communicating what we might miss in an English translation. This is that tense in Greek that suggests continual, ongoing action, thus, habit.) The habit is to invite. We cannot determine whether or not they will come. We just are to form a habit of inviting.

Notice this is a command. As surely as God has commanded us to pray or give or serve or do anything else, God has said to form a habit and the habit is inviting guests home for dinner.

We are to offer hospitality without grumbling. There are at least two reasons for this. All idea degenerate into work. It is work having people over. Someone has to vacuum the floor. Someone has to prepare the snacks. Someone has to pick up the phone and invite.

We are to offer hospitality without grumbling for a second reason. Some people are hard to love. We say we want to win our world for God, but what we mean is, we want to reach nice people, funny people, interesting people. God has called us to reach out to all kinds of people and sometimes they are kind of hard to love.

What are we to expect when we invite? Sometimes they will come. Sometimes they won't. No matter. Form a habit. Do it over and over again. Keep inviting. Sometimes they will come. Sometimes they won't. Sometimes they will be late. Sometimes they will be boring. Sometimes they will be rude. Sometimes they will be obnoxious. Sometimes they will come and they won't leave.

Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Who are we to offer hospitality to? Jesus told us, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends." Or, as one translation has it, "Don't invite only your friends." I think that captures the spirit of it. You can invite your friends, but don't restrict the invitation list to only your friends.

True confession time: Have you ever had a luncheon or dinner and invited only your friends? Jesus says to stop it. In love, He says, "Stop inviting just your friends."

If you will do what the Bible says you can double your class. You are twice as likely to be growing if you have twice as many parties!

#2 Big Team

Groups that have lots of people involved in ministry are more than twice as likely to grow as those with small teams. Here is the way I put it on they survey:

8. How many class officers (i.e. inreach leaders, outreach leaders, fellowship leaders, etc.) do you have for your class?

None -- only me
One
Two
Three
More than three

In this case I grouped the top two and the bottom two together, ignoring the middle group. People who have a large team--three or more are 115% more likely to report that they are growing than those with only the teacher or only teacher and one other person.

Jesus taught us this would be true. The harvest is plentiful; the workers are few. One of the most predictable ways of increasing the harvest is increasing the number of workers in the harvest.

If you want to grow your group, get lots of people involved. These people might include:

Inreach leaders (invite every member)
Outreach leaders (invite every prospect)
Fellowship leaders
Teacher in training
Prayer leaders
Class leader/ administrator
Care group leaders

In order to get these leaders, I recommend you have a vision day once a quarter. The vision day is where you re-cast the vision for the group. What is the vision for the group? The same vision Jesus gave His group: make disciples of all nations, starting with this small group. As Henry Blackaby put it, anything less is planned disobedience.

How can you reach the whole world starting with your small group? Doubling every two years or less is a good start. A group of ten that doubles every eighteen months can reach a thousand people in ten years. The second and third ten years get really interesting.

How are we going to double every two years or less? By having lots of parties and lots of people helping with the parties we are almost certain to double. (By the way, if we combine these two attributes the results are really impressive: The high fellowship/ high team group is 256% more likely to be growing than is the low fellowship/ low team group.

Ok, who wants to invite every member?
Who wants to invite every prospect?
Who wants to help plan three fellowships in the next three months?
Who could the group identify who has strong administrative gifts and would keep us on on task?
Who would like to be on the prayer team?

The idea is not to get so many slots filled; the idea is to get everyone with a job. We want everyone to be involved in the work of the ministry, according to their giftedness. There are many places to serve outside of the small group. But within the group, helping the group to double every two years or less is a great way to get started.

What makes groups grow, part 2

2009-07-29T09:59:00.001-06:00

Things that didn't matter hardly at all. (Less than 10% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top group)
Things that only mattered a little. (Between 11% and 100% difference likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that mattered a lot. (If you are in the top group in these factors you are twice as likely--or more--to be growing than if you are in the bottom group. Between 101% and 1000% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that matter most. (If this is true of you, you are almost 11 times more likely to be growing than if it is not. More than 1000% difference in likelihood of growth between the top group and the bottom group.)

#1 - Time spent on group more than time spent on the lesson

I predicted that this would matter. I thought it would matter more than it did.

For all these reasons I predicted that teachers who spent lots of time with the students would be growing and teachers who spent lots of time on the lesson would not. Again, I was wrong.

Teachers who spend more time with students than they do on the lesson are 34% more likely to be growing than those who spend more time on the lesson than the spend with their students.

This demonstrates that there is more than one way to slice the pie. You can get there through great teaching, or you can get there through spending lots of time with your students.

#2 Purpose of the group: is it mostly about growing members spiritually, or reaching out to outsiders?

Groups that saw their purpose as more about reaching to outsiders than growing spiritually were 53% more likely to be growing than those who saw their purpose primarily about growing spiritually.

This raises an interesting question. Can you grow spiritually without a deep interest in the lost? Does a deep interest in reaching the lost tend to enhance spiritual growth, or distract from it?

There is a tendency to make false dichotomies where no tension exists. Truth is, you can't grow close to God without caring about what He cares about--the lost.

I have heard jokes around the idea that this is an admonition to drive, not fly. LOW I am with you always. It doesn't say anything about 30,000 feet.

It is one of the many things I love about speaking and writing and serving the Lord. I feel close to God when I serve. You will too. Many of you have.

A group that is on mission with God in growing and reaching is not only more effective growing and reaching, they are also more effective at getting people closer to God.

#3 Teaching ability

Teachers that are self-described as 4 or 5 star teachers are 68% more likely to report they are growing than those who are self-described as 1 or 2 star teachers.

I don't know about you, but this is one thing that is not a surprise to me. I would have predicted that the better teaching, the more likely the growth.

Five star teachers -- 48% growing
Four star teachers -- 47% growing
Three star teachers -- 37% growing
Two star teachers -- 35% growing
One star teachers -- 6% growing

#4 Visitation

Help!

If you would like to further our understanding of what makes groups grouw, please fill out a follow-up survey. As with the first time, it is pretty short and sweet. Also, you don't need to have filled out the first survey to participate in the second.

We also have a survey for participants in this round of surveys. If you could ask your class members to fill out that survey, it would be great.

Both surveys can be accessed from the front page of my web: www.joshhunt.com

Thanks!

What Makes Groups Grow, part 1

2009-07-28T13:18:00.000-06:00

I have just completed three months of asking 1031 teachers thirteen questions designed to help us understand what makes groups grow. This article is the first in series that summarize my findings.

I asked thirteen questions. The first one was

1. Would you describe your class as. . .
declining
stable
growing
growing rapidly

This question was used as a point of comparison with all the rest. For example, the next question (which was really four questions) read

2. How would you rate your strength in the following areas on a one to five scale:
Teaching ability
People skills
Spiritual vibrancy
Organizational skill

The question, then, becomes, "Are 4 and 5 star teachers any more likely to report they are growing than are 1 and 2 star teachers?" What would you guess?

I then divided my findings into four groups:

Things that didn't matter hardly at all. (Less than 10% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top group)
Things that only mattered a little. (Between 11% and 100% difference likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that mattered a lot. (If you are in the top group in these factors you are twice as likely--or more--to be growing than if you are in the bottom group. Between 101% and 1000% difference in likelihood of growth in the bottom and top groups.)
Things that matter most. (If this is true of you, you are almost 11 times more likely to be growing than if it is not. More than 1000% difference in likelihood of growth between the top group and the bottom group.)

Here are the twelve predictors of growth sorted in the order of how much difference they make in predicting growth.

Things that didn't matter much

#1 Outsiders or insiders?

My take on that is this. If you ignore the people in your class, your class won't grow, no matter how much time you spend trying to get outsiders to join it.

Balance in all things. Jesus taught us to walk the narrow way. We need to minister to outsiders as well as insiders.

#2 Embrace the vision of growing and dividing

This was a real shocker to me. Here is the question:

Not so. There was almost no difference (2%) in the likelihood of growth between those in the top and those in the bottom of this scale. How do you explain this?

The more the teacher has embraced the vision of growing and dividing, the more likely he or she is to be aware of the group's resistance.

Eventually, as the teacher succeeds in growing and dividing the group more people get on board with the vision.

In short, if a group has embraced the vision it is more likely to be growing. But, the more the vision is cast, the more aware the teacher is of the resistance. These factors offset each other.

#3 Organizational skill

This is the third thing in the "hardly matters at all" category. Teachers who report high organizational ability are only 7% more likely to be growing than those who report low organizational skill.

Next week, we will look at things that matter.

New Conference Plan

2009-07-15T00:14:00.000-06:00

With the economy as it is, I am looking for new ways to get the doubling group message out there. Here is an idea. I am making this offer from now till the end of July. Instead of a conference for $1100 or so, how does $200 sound? There is some fine print; read on.

Local host church pays $200. This goes toward my expenses (travel, hotel, etc.)
Association pays $200. This goes toward my expenses as well. (travel, hotel, etc.) Note: I want both a church and the Association on the hook financially so they are motivated to promote the event. It doesn't work for either the Association or local church to just pay the whole $400.
Each individual attending pays $20 and gets a free book (up to $19.99 value). This replaces the honorarium I used to get paid. As an author, I get books at a discount and it is that gap that creates my honorarium.
There must be 100 people in attendance. If there are not, you agree to buy the remaining books at $20 each.
There must be more than one stop on the tour. You can add to an additional trip, or contact a church in your part of the world and work out a time when the two of you can host meetings adjacent to each other. Most of the time there are more than one church on the tour. If you plan six months or so out during a reasonably popular time, there is a good chance I can book the second church.
If you would like for Missy to train your preschool and children's workers, here is how that would work. In addition to the costs above, local church and Association both pay $150 more. (Expenses are less for her than me because we share a hotel room, car, and gas expense.) There must be 150 total attendance each paying $20 each and each receiving a book. Missy will have several titles teachers can choose from.

I am looking for a few early adopters to experiment with this new plan. I want to experiment with it on a limited basis before I roll it out. Thus, this offer is only available for conferences that are booked before August 1, 2009.

Lessons from the Parsonage

2009-06-05T02:47:00.002-06:00

If you have been reading these articles for sometime, I think you are about to notice something about future articles: they are about to become a whole lot more practical and realistic. I am now writing from the perspective of a fellow worker in the trenches.

My new church has a parsonage next door to the church. Although we don't plan to live there all the time, we wanted to fix it up for those times when we did want to stay there, and, most of all, to have parties on Friday night and invite prospects, absentees and members to attend.

The parsonage was not in too bad of shape, but, there is no better time to paint than when there is no furniture in the way. And, while we were at it, the church agreed to put in some new carpet and linoleum and some other odds and ends.

The church volunteered to begin working on it before I came, but I had the grand idea that we should work on it together as a great bonding experience. I was picturing a one-day, "barn-raising" kind of event. Boy, was I was I wrong.

Here is my first lesson

Most things take longer, are more trouble, and cost more than you expect.

I suspect this is a pre-cursor of all things local church: they take longer, they are more trouble, and they cost more than you expect. That is the bad news. Here is some good news:

With some work, it can still get done. Even though it is more trouble than you think the project can still get done. They are laying the carpet and linoleum and I can't wait to see how it will look come Saturday. When you paint every surface, carpet the floors, re-do the cabinets and what not, it looks like a new place.

What has happened to the parsonage I hope will happen to the heart of this little church in time. My prayer is that we can work together to revive their hope and optimism about church and the things of God. My learning is it may take longer and be more trouble than I thought, but I believe it can be done.

We read in the book of Ezekiel where there is the valley of dry bones. Dry, dead, lifeless bones. The question is asked, "Can these bones live again?" The answer: you know, Lord. Implication: You know they can, Lord.

It may be more trouble and take longer than I expect, but my prayer is that hearts that have been pretty discouraged and down will again be uplifted with hope and enthusiasm.

Work with your workers

On the great work day where I thought the parsonage would be totally renovated, we, of course, came up to work with the people. We had a good turn out -- I think about 3/4s of the people showed up for at least part of the day. But, as stated, everything takes longer than we thought. There was a LOT to do at the end of the day.

Missy and continued to help, coming up one or two days a week as our schedule allowed. Others--mostly my in-laws and one other couple--came up in the evenings to continue the work. This was our mistake. We came up during the day; we should have come up in the evenings. We should have worked physically, literally along side the people. It was helpful that they knew we were contributing; it would have been better had we worked along side each other.

Everyone who has ever done a visitation program knows this. You don't send people out alone; you send them out in small teams of two or three. When they are finished you get everyone back together at the church to hear reports and encourage one another. The team that did nothing but knock on silent doors all night is encouraged by the team that saw someone saved. We need to work with our workers.

This is why Jesus sent his disciples out two by two. They could have gone to twice as many place had they gone out by themselves. But, ministry can be hard and we need each other to stay encouraged.

The wisest man who ever lived spoke of this:

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: (10) If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! (11) Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? (12) Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NIV)

Recruit more workers

One of the other benefits of me coming down evenings when others were working rather than during the day when it was more convenient for me is that I would have seen what was really going on. My in-laws and one other couple were doing the vast majority of the work. And, it is not because no one else was willing to help. They just were not aware of what was really going on. Had I been more hands on, I would have been more aware of what was going on and could have been more proactive about recruiting others to help.

Ever help someone move and they get a big crowd there and buy some Krispy Kreme donuts and provide coffee and donuts and there is a big crowd and lots of conversation and fellowship and laugher and, did I mention they got a good crowd there? It can actually be a lot of fun. The work goes quickly and it feels good to move a lot of stuff quickly. You get finished by noon and all go get a pizza together and have some laughs. A good time was had by all.

Ever have the opposite experience? Someone asks you to move and they only recruit one or two others to help. There is not a lot of energy with this crowd. It feels like you are moving at a snails pace because you are. It takes all day and you are totally exhausted and more than a little grumpy at the end of the day. You don't feel like having pizza with anyone. You are just ready to get home. A fun time was not had by all.

In church life, the Pastor is Chief Recruiting Officer. I didn't do such a great job of recruiting on this first project. In the future, I plan to do better.

Photo Shoot Outreach

2009-05-21T18:57:00.001-06:00

What would you think of an outreach event that attracted 50% of your normal worship attendance as visitors? I want to tell you about such a plan.

One of the things I am going to love about pastoring is the opportunity to experiment with ideas. Anyone who knows me knows I am an idea guy. I love ideas. I never met an idea I didn't like. In my old life I only got to smile about ideas. Now, I get to experiment with ideas and see if they work. The good ones I will pass along to you.

Most ideas don't work. I was in a church once that was having lots of visitors. I asked them how they attracted so many visitors. "Banners" was the pastor's brief reply. They were on a busy street. They had a pile of seasonal banners. Seasonal, but not dated. So, they would put up a banner for two weeks, then have nothing for two weeks. Then, a different banner for two weeks, and take it down for two weeks. This was one pastor's explanation for lots of visitors.

I loved this idea. Loved it so much that the first thing I did when I started pastoring was to buy a banner. Zero visitors. We may try it again; the banner ended up looking great on the computer screen, but not so good in the real world. It was the wrong color -- too much like the color of dirt. (There is lots of dirt where I live.) It didn't stand out much. So, that idea didn't work. But still, we might try it again.

This idea worked in spades. We did a Mother's Day Photo Shoot. We offered a free 8 X 10 for every mother and child that came to get their picture taken. Worship attendance at our church is normally about 30. We had fifteen visitors there on Mother's Day. If you would like to see the pics, click here: http://www.joshhuntphotos.com/gallery/8189261_DJ5fR#534972955_nDf8R

While we are showing off photos, here are some of my favorite wedding photos I have taken: http://www.joshhuntphotos.com/

Of course, it helps that I do a little wedding photography on the side and have some photographer's lighting -- umbrellas and such. If you don't do wedding photography as a side business, you might have to hire a photographer. I'd think you could get one cheap if you offered the photographer the opportunity to sell additional prints. In my case, they can buy additional prints if they want at cost.

The prints themselves cost about $2 each. In our case, we have a church member that owns a Radio Shack that has a photo printer and they agreed to print the photos for free. So, no cost for the photographer, and no cost for the prints. God is good.

One other little bit of fine print. I told them the free photos would be ready in two weeks, but they have to come back to church to get them! So, they have to hear me preach twice to get a free 8 X 10. Fifteen people thought that was worth it!

This plan could, of course, work on Father's Day. My guess is it won't work quite as well as Mother's Day because Moms are more into this kind of thing. But, I still think it could work.

We are still fixing up the parsonage so we can do follow up in the form of -- you guessed it -- parties! But, for now, we will celebrate the victories we have.

How to grow a church

In order to grow a church you have to have visitors. 100% of the growth of any church will come from the visitors. Then, once you have visitors, you have to get them to stick around. You have to lead them (as much as it depends on us) to Christ, and lead them to live the disciple's life. Then, you have to lead them to be workers so you can expand the organization. It all starts with visitors.

Most churches have plenty of visitors. I did a survey once where I asked 500 churches four questions:

How many visitors do you have?
What is your attendance?
How many join?
What was your attendance a year ago?

I worked out the math and discovered that growing churches have very few more visitors than non-growing churches. The difference is, in growing churches, the visitors stick around. But, this number varied widely. There were some churches that had very few visitors. Hard for these churches to grow, no matter how sticky they are.

I was an interim pastor for a while in El Paso. We had around 75% of our visitors joining, and still were barely growing by 5% a year. Explanation? Very few visitors. For churches like that one, and the one I am in now, the key to growing the church starts with attracting visitors.

Our next attractional event is next Friday. We are showing the Fireproof movie. Great movie. We bought a bunch of posters and a guy in our church, Wayne, put them up in a bunch of stores. I will let you know how that works out. We show the trailer in church and encourage everyone to invite their friends. We plan to do this kind of thing regularly-- plan events that might be attractive to outsiders.

Use Stories like this when you teach, part 2

2009-01-10T09:05:00.002-07:00

Laughter and tears. That is a pretty good goal for you as you teach. Make them laugh; make them cry. Make them remember.

One of the best ways to teach is the way Jesus taught--through stories. People don't remember ideas and concepts and principles so much that they remember stories. I told a story this last weekend at a conference. One of the people at lunch afterwards had not been in the conference. Someone said to me, "Tell them the story about the. . ." I said, "I am off work and tired of talking; you tell it." They did. It wasn't word for word, but they got the gist right and everyone laughed.

Stories are like that. They are transferrable. They are remember-able. They stick.

Here is an example of a story I included in a recent lesson and a good example of the kind of story you want to use as you teach. http://www.allinspiration.com/Friendship/Stories/touching_story_of_kyle.html

One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class walking home from school. His name was Kyle. It looked like he was carrying all of his books. I thought to myself, "Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd." I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friend tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on. As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him. He looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes. My heart went out to him. So, I jogged over to him and as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his
eye. As I handed him his glasses, I said, "Those guys are jerks. They really should get lives."

He looked at me and said, "Hey thanks!" There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude. I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived. As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before. He said he had gone to private school before now. I would have never hung out with a private school kid before..

We talked all the way home, and I carried his books. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid. I asked him if he wanted to play football on Saturday with me and my friends. He said yes. We hung all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him. And my friends thought the same of him.

Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again. I stopped him and said, "Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!" He just laughed and handed me half the books.

Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends. When we were seniors, we began to think about college. Kyle decided on Georgetown, and I was going to Duke. I knew that we would always be friends, that the miles would never be a problem. He was going to be a doctor, and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class. I teased him all the time about being a nerd. He had to prepare a speech for graduation. I was so glad it wasn't me having to get up there and speak.

Graduation day, I saw Kyle.. He looked great. He was one of those guys that really found himself during high school. He filled out and actually looked good in glasses. He had more dates than me and all the girls loved him! Boy, sometimes I was jealous.

Today was one of those days. I could see that he was nervous about his speech. So, I smacked him on the back and said, "Hey, big guy, you'll be great!" He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled. "Thanks," he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began. "Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years. Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach.... but mostly your friends. I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them. I am going to tell you a story." I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the story of the first day we met. He had planned to kill himself over the weekend. He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn't have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home. He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile. "Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable."

I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment. I saw his Mom and Dad looking at me and smiling that same grateful smile. Not until that moment did I realize it's depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture you can change a person's life. For better or for worse. God puts us all in each other's lives to impact one another in some way. Look for God in others.

Use stories like that when you teach. Great news is, it is easier than ever to find them. I found this one simply by Googling, "touching story about friendship."

For $200 a year, your church can put lessons into the hands of all your teachers that include these kind of stories. see www.joshhunt.com/lessons.htm for details.

They correspond with Lifeway's curriculum outlines:

Explore the Bible Series
Bible Studies for Life Series
Masterworks Series (my favorite)

I also write lessons that go along with the International Standard Series.