Ralph Moore's Blog

Anxiety & Empathy Go Hand In Hand

Chronic
anxiety can ruin your life! I know because it nearly ruined mine.

Over
thirty percent of the population lives with ongoing anxiety issues. I would bet
that the ratio is higher among pastors, especially those stressed out planting
new churches.

As
a young church planter I learned that
you can worry over church finances and controlling people. You can fear that
you offended someone because they didn’t show up in church for a couple of
weeks. There are lots of opportunities for a pastor to ‘invest’ their anxious
feelings.

In
first couple of years I got so good
at worrying that I would spend most of my days off from work quoting scriptures,
or singing reassuring spiritual songs in an attempt to unearth a measure of
peace. Prayer, scripture and spiritual songs are fundamental to our lives, but
sometimes we need something more. I eventually discovered that I needed medical
help.

Chronic vs. Acute
Anxiety

When
chronic anxiety flowers it blossoms into acute anxiety. At this point you can’t
sweep it under the rug because it has you by the throat and won’t let go.

Anxiety
has become acute when you can’t sleep, become extremely short tempered or find yourself
unable to concentrate well enough to keep your job. I don’t know how bad it
gets for you. I do know this—there are things you can do to manage your
anxiety. They include a deeper walk with God, some practical tools and the
medicines that doctors prescribe. It is the medications that cause some people
to struggle.

If
you suffer from anxiety or depression, and work with a doctor, you probably
carry some scars inflicted by people who love you. There is a good chance that
some well-meaning individual, or group, has condemned you for seeking help from
medicine instead of God.

The
reason I believe this is true is because of my own miserable track record. Until
I hit the wall of acute anxiety I wasn’t exactly famous for empathy.

Before
my breakdown, a decade ago, I regularly piled guilt onto people if they were on
medication for psychological illnesses. My opinion boiled down to my perception
of a lack of spiritual discipline on the part of the hurting individual. It
would take a walk on the dark side for me to understand what others suffered.

Chronic
anxiety swelled over several months until sleep finally became impossible. I
suffered a complete panic attack for three days. My wife was finishing chemotherapy,
I had lost a bundle in the stock market and I had an insurmountable problem
with another Christian leader. When I finally lost all control I was forced to
see a doctor—and was helped immensely.

Pray
And Take The Medicine

Whenever
both prayer and medicine are available, is it really a matter of either/or?
Can’t we seek help from two sources at the same time?

I
once heard a wise man say that if you have a headache, “You should pray and take an aspirin.” Actually, he said,
“If you think it is God’s will for you to have a headache after you pray then
do nothing. But if you think it is not God’s desire for you to have a headache,
you should pray and take an aspirin.”
That is good advice. I think the same wisdom holds for stress related problems.
You pray and you take the medicine.

I
recently spoke with a person who lives with a chronic physical ailment—it is one that, left untreated, will eventually
kill him. When he discovered that I am on long-term medication he scolded me.
He bragged that he is holding out for
healing and quit taking the drugs, which the doctor had said would save his
life. He says he believes healing comes from Jesus, and only from Jesus.
Therefore he quit the medicine. The problem is, he’s still sick and growing
sicker by the day.

There
is a place for medication and it is a valid place…even in the life of a
committed spiritual leader such as yourself. (Adapted from "Defeating Anxiety.")

Anxiety & Empathy Go Hand In Hand

Chronic
anxiety can ruin your life! I know because it nearly ruined mine.

Over
thirty percent of the population lives with ongoing anxiety issues. I would bet
that the ratio is higher among pastors, especially those stressed out planting
new churches.

As
a young church planter I learned that
you can worry over church finances and controlling people. You can fear that
you offended someone because they didn’t show up in church for a couple of
weeks. There are lots of opportunities for a pastor to ‘invest’ their anxious
feelings.

In
first couple of years I got so good
at worrying that I would spend most of my days off from work quoting scriptures,
or singing reassuring spiritual songs in an attempt to unearth a measure of
peace. Prayer, scripture and spiritual songs are fundamental to our lives, but
sometimes we need something more. I eventually discovered that I needed medical
help.

Chronic vs. Acute
Anxiety

When
chronic anxiety flowers it blossoms into acute anxiety. At this point you can’t
sweep it under the rug because it has you by the throat and won’t let go.

Anxiety
has become acute when you can’t sleep, become extremely short tempered or find yourself
unable to concentrate well enough to keep your job. I don’t know how bad it
gets for you. I do know this—there are things you can do to manage your
anxiety. They include a deeper walk with God, some practical tools and the
medicines that doctors prescribe. It is the medications that cause some people
to struggle.

If
you suffer from anxiety or depression, and work with a doctor, you probably
carry some scars inflicted by people who love you. There is a good chance that
some well-meaning individual, or group, has condemned you for seeking help from
medicine instead of God.

The
reason I believe this is true is because of my own miserable track record. Until
I hit the wall of acute anxiety I wasn’t exactly famous for empathy.

Before
my breakdown, a decade ago, I regularly piled guilt onto people if they were on
medication for psychological illnesses. My opinion boiled down to my perception
of a lack of spiritual discipline on the part of the hurting individual. It
would take a walk on the dark side for me to understand what others suffered.

Chronic
anxiety swelled over several months until sleep finally became impossible. I
suffered a complete panic attack for three days. My wife was finishing chemotherapy,
I had lost a bundle in the stock market and I had an insurmountable problem
with another Christian leader. When I finally lost all control I was forced to
see a doctor—and was helped immensely.

Pray
And Take The Medicine

Whenever
both prayer and medicine are available, is it really a matter of either/or?
Can’t we seek help from two sources at the same time?

I
once heard a wise man say that if you have a headache, “You should pray and take an aspirin.” Actually, he said,
“If you think it is God’s will for you to have a headache after you pray then
do nothing. But if you think it is not God’s desire for you to have a headache,
you should pray and take an aspirin.”
That is good advice. I think the same wisdom holds for stress related problems.
You pray and you take the medicine.

I
recently spoke with a person who lives with a chronic physical ailment—it is one that, left untreated, will eventually
kill him. When he discovered that I am on long-term medication he scolded me.
He bragged that he is holding out for
healing and quit taking the drugs, which the doctor had said would save his
life. He says he believes healing comes from Jesus, and only from Jesus.
Therefore he quit the medicine. The problem is, he’s still sick and growing
sicker by the day.

There
is a place for medication and it is a valid place…even in the life of a
committed spiritual leader such as yourself. (Adapted from "Defeating Anxiety.")

Vision & Multiplication

Just how broad is your vision?

I got into an interesting discussion about vision the other
day. A group of us were discussing “It,” by Craig Groeschel. That day’s focus
was the vision chapter.

One church planter in the room said two things that seemed
to sell himself and his church short of potential. First, he was assembling a
committee to build a consensus vision. Second, he said his vision for the
church is to make devoted disciples.

I don’t believe committees can take the place of Moses… The
core of a new church is its vision, delivered by God to a single man. Both Old
and New Testaments would validate the first item on my job description, “To
seek God for his vision for our congregation.” I think a pastor’s first
responsibility is to know God and his plans for a particular local church. You
can’t delegate hungry prayer.

The second mistake this young pastor made was to sell his
congregation short of its potential.

Jesus commissioned the apostles to make disciples. They did
it by planting churches. This would suggest that we should strive to make
disciples who make disciples while we make a few disciples who reproduce our
church. The true fruit of a coconut tree is neither a coconut or another
tree—it is a coconut grove.

Simply by raising the bar in something as mundane as a
written vision statement we can instill vision in our congregations to actually
go into “all the world” with the gospel by multiplying churches. Then we’ll be
sure they are not content just to try to be the biggest church on the block…

Vision & Multiplication

Just how broad is your vision?

I got into an interesting discussion about vision the other
day. A group of us were discussing “It,” by Craig Groeschel. That day’s focus
was the vision chapter.

One church planter in the room said two things that seemed
to sell himself and his church short of potential. First, he was assembling a
committee to build a consensus vision. Second, he said his vision for the
church is to make devoted disciples.

I don’t believe committees can take the place of Moses… The
core of a new church is its vision, delivered by God to a single man. Both Old
and New Testaments would validate the first item on my job description, “To
seek God for his vision for our congregation.” I think a pastor’s first
responsibility is to know God and his plans for a particular local church. You
can’t delegate hungry prayer.

The second mistake this young pastor made was to sell his
congregation short of its potential.

Jesus commissioned the apostles to make disciples. They did
it by planting churches. This would suggest that we should strive to make
disciples who make disciples while we make a few disciples who reproduce our
church. The true fruit of a coconut tree is neither a coconut or another
tree—it is a coconut grove.

Simply by raising the bar in something as mundane as a
written vision statement we can instill vision in our congregations to actually
go into “all the world” with the gospel by multiplying churches. Then we’ll be
sure they are not content just to try to be the biggest church on the block…

Re-Christianizing France

    Earlier this year
my travels took me to Lille, France. As usual the conference was about making
disciples and multiplying churches.

    What set this trip apart
was the opportunity to bring Ruby along with me. She spent a day with the
pastor’s wives. It was the first time the group did anything like this for the
wives.

   Pastor’s wives live under
nearly as much pressure and time-constraint as their husbands.

   The message Ruby brings
is about putting yourself and your family first before tending to church
duties. The women in the conference loved spending time together without the
men—they also drank up the teaching.

France Is
Changing

   The nation of France is
changing quite rapidly. It’s not the place you see in movies.

   You change in contrasting
styles of architecture and art. There is a mix of the very modern alongside the
historic France that we all imagine.

   Perhaps the greatest
change to France is in the culture. Millions of immigrants are changing French
society. Islam threatens the French way of life. But Christianity is also
growing—fast!

   According to a Christianity
Today article written several years ago a new
church pops up, in France, every 11 days (http://goo.gl/KMxmz).

   The
group I was with has grown from a single congregation in the early 1990s to
nearly 50 churches today. On my first visit about 12 years ago I met with a
small band of mostly discouraged pastors. Their story has changed rapidly in a
decade.

   More recent trips meet with a palpable difference in leadership morale.
The same pastors who once complained of a lack of just
about everything are now busy training disciples to
plant new churches. Actually these people had been so discouraged that it seems
miraculous that they are still standing, let alone standing with great vision
and hope. They display little concern
about money, buildings or land. Instead these people have faith that God will
provide.

   They are intent on planting more churches. And it is newly planted
churches, which will eventually transform Europe’s most
secular nation. Ever since the French
Revolution, France has embraced secularism. Though two-thirds of the population
say they are Catholic, few of those have actually been in church during recent
decades. The government is even forced to demolish historic church buildings
for lack of local support.

A Groundswell Of
New Life

    The numbers are
not yet overwhelming but a groundswell is gaining momentum. The number of
Evangelical churches quadrupled in forty years. Today’s estimates total around
4,000 evangelical churches. The total number of adherents is about 350,000. But
those numbers would certainly balloon if you were able to count the churches
among new immigrants to the nation. Because many of those people (and leaders),
are in the country without official recognition; their numbers go uncounted.

   Today, laws governing separation of church and state guarantee the
civil rights of Evangelicals and Pentecostals who would have been persecuted by
a nominally Catholic civil government in the past.

      Attendance in Catholic
churches and home prayer groups (house churches) is also on the rise. The
Catholic church suffered the loss of many priests during the 20th Century, but it
is showing a resurgence as many lay-led congregations spring to new life.

    Much
of this growth is evangelical. I found literature for the Alpha Course in
several Catholic churches on a recent vacation trip. And, true to the claims of
the Christianity Today
article I cited above, I did actually see an
Alpha poster in the famed Notre Dame de Paris.

Not Just An Immigration Issue

      Many new congregations are
led by immigrants from French-speaking Africa. In fact, research I did for my
book, “How To Multiply Your Church,”
shows that for every two Muslims moving to France there are three Christians
accompanying them.

    But to relegate all growth to immigration would be a mistake. What I’ve
witnessed while teaching in France is that immigration does play a strong role
in the multiplication of churches. But it is far from the entire story.

    It seems that the mostly African immigrants are so poor that they see
opportunity where French nationals once missed it. A case in point is the
building where we last met. The congregation meets in an industrial space in a
hundred-year-old facility. Their next neighbor is an auto repair shop. The
outside doesn’t promise much but when you step inside you meet with bright
light, lovely facilities and good food.

    The willingness of the immigrant churches to make do with little is an
encouragement to more traditionally minded Frenchmen to dig a little deeper.
Doing so has led to the discovery that God really does provide even if we
sometimes don’t see it.

Church
Multiplication

    Interest in spirituality flourishes in France. Secular philosophers now
question secularism and its dearth of truly human values. Millions of French
people are looking for a spiritual root to life.

    Both Christianity and Islam are on the rise. But Christianity is growing
faster, in its many forms. Catholics, mainline Protestants, Evangelicals and
Pentecostals all show growth in one way or another.

    As far back as 2003, the French Bible Society reported sales of 80,000
Bibles in a single month. Even supermarkets now display Bibles for sale.

    All of this is good news. Make that great news. But we know that the real
conservation of the harvest will come in the form of disciplemaking and the
multiplication of new churches—Ask the Lord of the harvest…!

NOTE: Be sure you click on "Ralph"s Photos" and then on "France 2012" to see pictures from the trip.

Visiting The Ivory Coast

A Troubled History

   Cote d’Ivorie, or the Ivory Coast, has a troubled history. It has gone from Muslim rule to being ruled by the French during the Colonial period. 

   This was a time of forced labor by black Africans in service to white Europeans. The people struggled for independence after World War 2 weakened the Colonial Powers. The nation finally gained independence in 1960.

   The years following independence were relatively calm and quite prosperous. The French had seen the need to give up control and spent fifteen years preparing for it. The result was a partnership not seen in any of the other West African nations. Cote d’Ivorie became the richest nation in French speaking Africa (Half of all African nations speak French as a first language, but they constitute only 1/3 of the people. The other 2/3 speak English).

   For twenty years the economy grew at a rate greater than 10% per year—something matched only by the growth of China today.

The country is still the largest exporter of cocoa in the world.

Civil Wars

   Prosperity gave way to greed and corruption. One-party rule may have built an economy but it was not amenable to political competition. The result was that portions of the military rose against the government in 2002. There was relatively little blood shed, but the economy was broken. Poverty has ruled since that time. Though Cote d’Ivorie has a per capita income of more than $900 US dollars per year, a quarter of the people live on less than $1.25 US dollars per day.

   A new government came to power after the civil war of 2002. It lasted until a contested election in 2010. Civil war erupted as the former president was seen as corrupting the election process. He was deposed in a violent conflict. In fact, the group I met with lost one of their leaders in the aftermath of that war. He was hacked to death with a machete at the same time I was visiting with Marius and other leaders in South Africa a year ago.

Islam And Christianity

   Today the country enjoys relative stability. But Africa is undergoing a continuing contest between Islam and Christianity. 

   The difference is that Islam “evangelizes” with guns while the Christians do it by extending love to their neighbors. You will note that most of today’s wars in Africa are between the North and the South. It seems that the further north you travel in most of these countries, the more you fall under Islamic control. 

   Cote d’Ivorie is no exception. Christianity and Islam claim equal percentages of the population (37.5 percent). There is tension among the two groups and another civil war could erupt at any moment. 

   Arabic nations fund Islamic charities throughout Africa. Some have said that they fund wars as well. 

Prayers

   Please pray for these beautiful people. First for personal protection. And then pray for success in their ministry endeavors. They are our brothers and sisters...

Who You Gonna Call?

Spent the week hanging and coaching a church planter in trouble. It seems he called the wrong bunch when launching his church.

Like so many others he went after mostly Christian families. The theory being that they offer stability. And stability is what he got—too much stability. When he began to ask people to step into ministry they simply left the church.

The sad result is that he quickly lost two-thirds of his congregation.

Most were good people who simply migrated to their local megachurch where they could comfortably hide in the crowd.

This church is located in an area of inexpensive luxury homes and some were actually embarrassed to host a home group because their 3000 sq. ft. home wasn’t large enough. But the main reason underlying all of this is that families are busy…and families that haven’t been taught to sacrifice seldom learn.

This man is left to manage all the details involved in running a church. It is killing he and his wife.

My advice was to gather the few young, single adults in the church and focus the best of his energy on discipling these people.

If he does, he will build a cadre of people loyal to him. They will understand the missional side of church life. And, they will eventually marry and build families around the Great Commission rather than in resistance to it.

In essence, he should pastor two churches at the same time—the stable families and his hot young disciples.

Admittedly, this is the long way around the block—it does take time. But, it is the model Jesus left us and it is what Paul did with Silas, Timothy, etc.

My only addition to the strategy is to place the focus on young singles since they possess wondrous amounts of the time, discretionary income and idealism that generate movements…

A Billion Dollar Church Campus...

How would you like to have a billion dollars worth or real estate to help with your newest church plant? We did and it was better than we expected.

We actually started our current congregation under a tree in a beach park—illegally. Not real fun when the policeman would slowly check us out each week just before it was time for that oh-so-crucial offering.

From there we moved to a park building and then to fifteen years in public schools.

I might add that, though God was blessing, we were real good at self pity over temporary quarters.

Then it hit us, we were actually using more than a billion dollars worth of real estate for our operations. This included the magnificent public school campus, several axillary parking lots, our office building, 150 houses for home groups, several coffee shops, a host of campgrounds and two hotel ballrooms.

We got so excited that we created a notebook called, “Our Church Campus.” It included photos of each site available to us along with pertinent data for rental and logistics.

It worked well for a season and we finally landed on our own campus after seventeen years in temporary quarters. We still have more than a billion dollars worth of real estate, but I have to admit that we actually had more fun while we were totally dependent on rented quarters and all the variety they provided.

There is always that never ending longing for “the good old days.”

Cape Town--Mission Hope Trip

   I recently spent a week in Cape Town, South Africa teaching some very eager people to raise leaders and launch churches from within their own churches. 

While most were from the cities, I met a couple who had recently moved from Transkei, a country bordering South Africa. They had come to train for pastoral ministry under my friend Xavier Adriannse. 

Having grown up in the bush they were struggling with the culture shock that hit them when they moved from the countryside to one of the most physically beautiful cities in the world.

Meeting these soft-spoken people drives me harder in a quest to help where it is most needed. And, it is most needed where people can afford it the least. 

HISTORY

The earliest people to populate South Africa were called the, “San,” often referred to as, “Bushmen,” these brown-skinned people were eventually subjugated by black people arriving from northern parts of the continent.  

The first European to arrive in South Africa was a Portuguese explorer who arrived in 1487. He named the southernmost tip of the continent, “The Cape of Storms.” Upon returning to Portugal, his king re-named it, “The Cape of Good Hope,” in the belief that it led to the riches of the far east.  

But it was the Dutch who would colonize South Africa in the 1650s. Along with colonization came war, slavery and the discovery of diamonds and later, gold. By the 1800s the Dutch were at war with the British over the riches of the region. The British eventually prevailed. During this time racial segregation was mostly informal but would blossom into the evil of apartheid in the 1960s when South Africa became an independent nation.  

It wasn’t until the 1990s that the nation, under severe pressure from the rest of the world, dismantled apartheid. Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, eventually becoming the head of state. Today the nation enjoys more racial harmony than at any time in its history.

SOUTH AFRICA TODAY

South Africa is multi-ethnic and with a wide diversity of languages and cultures. About 79.5% of the South African population is ofAfrican.Africa also contains the largest communities of European,, and racially mixed ancestry in Africa. Whites make up only about 16 percent of the population. 

There are 11 officially recognized languages though English is pretty much common to everyday business.  

ECONOMY AND CRIME

South Africa has a mixed economy drawing from mineral resources, tourism and diversified agriculture. It is the largest economy on the continent. Home to more than 20 universities it has become an important intellectual center for the continent. 

Sadly, South Africa also hosts horrid crime rates. The United Nations rates South Africa as second for rape and murder per capita among the nations of the world. Most Middle-class South Africans live in gated communities.

Even the stable economy has done little to boost the unemployment situation. Many blacks have joined the middle class but many more live in poverty, some on less than two U.S. dollars per day.

RELIGION

Muslims claim that their faith is the fastest-growing religion of conversion in the country, with the number of black Muslims growing sixfold, from 12,000 in 1991 to 74,700 in 2004

Nearly 74 percent of South Africans consider themselves Christians, although that number is shrinking. While about 15 percent practice ancient native religions. The rest of the population is widely spread in its religious beliefs with about nine percent claiming no religious affiliation. 

JESUS POWER

Christianity played a strong role in the transition from apartheid to democracy (though apartheid had operated under a cloak of false interpretation of scripture). 

Sadly, the church seems to be losing ground in South Africa and that is why I traveled further than the distance around the world to get there and back. 

Frustrated with the time and expense of formal schooling Xavier is busy discipling potential pastors from five Southern African nations. Some have moved to Cape Town to train in his church. But, he often drives as much as 30 hours to spend time with his disciples. 

I first met Xavier in Johannesburg a year ago and discovered that he had built his church around a teaching series I had done on cassette-tape over 20 years ago. His thriving congregation now owns a wonderful building and is using it to multiply churches. One of the men he partners with is a university professor/missionary sent out by Hope Chapel Hermosa Beach. It seems the world is indeed a small place.

The trip was worth the long nights on airplanes and I will make it again in a couple of years. It is good to contribute knowledge and experience where people want it badly. . 

Thank you again for your prayers and financial support. These people could never afford the cost of the airline tickets, which allow me to spend time with them. You are touching the lives of people you will only meet in heaven.

 

 

Necessary Relationships For A Church Planter

  Six months after planting our church in a park, under a tree, we rented our first public school for services in Hawaii.

  I was still a newcomer, dressing and speaking like a tourist who thought he was a local—a lot about my demeanor was somewhat offensive to people who grew up in the community.

  The relationship with school leadership was a bust. I didn't communicate well with the principal. My mistakes were many, and they always magnified into crises.

  One day, I took my secretary to a meeting with the principal. While waiting for him, she made friends with his receptionist (The cookies we gaver her helped). This woman had previously been very cold toward me. My secretary managed to explain the church and its mission. She explained why she trusted me, and my plans for our church. She even made jokes apologizing for my funny clothes and odd speech.

  When the principal came to greet us, his receptionist went out of her way to introduce me to him with great respect. She tipped him off that she had now accepted me into her world. That worked wonders. He and I became friends that day and our problems greatly diminished. He eventually accepted the Lord through one of our members on his faculty.

  New relationships always risk potential miscommunication. The church planter faces a host of them. Some may seem institutional and insignificant at a time when you want to focus on evangelism and growth strategies. But, they are necessary to your success.

  These "extracurricular" relationships are 1. A landlord who makes it possible for you to meet. 2. The financial institutions necessary to your success. 3. Your parent church and its support capacities. 4. Your denomination if you have one. 5. Personal friendships from within your new community. 6. A prayer team who will support you over the long haul.

  To the degree that you cultivate these relationships, you'll walk a smoother path and sleep a whole lot easier.