Ralph Moore's Blog, page 3

Teambuilding And Disciplemaking

It's a Tuesday and I'm spending my day with our staff team, cross-checking each other's goals for the next quarter. 

This is a very productive time for us. It helps build unity into our staff. But more important is the atmosphere of challenge we've built into this time. We each challenge each other to stretch vision.

We normally spend Tuesday mornings in staff discipleship. This goes for about three hours each week and those are the most important hours of my working week. Outside my family, discipling our staff is the most important function in my life--more important than sermon prep, etc. This is where we keep getting leaders to plant churches.

Lots of pastors are into teambuilding. But much of that revolves around fun and staff outings or retreats. Yet, the master asked us to make disciples. He also spent massive amounts of time with twelve primary leaders, and more time with just three. 

Somehow most pastors seem to tradeoff Jesus' example for the flavor-of-the-month, in terms of books and current examples of success. Yet, in the long-term, those who make disciples are those who build movements. Think in terms of John Wesley, etc.

I submit that the most enduring investment you can make is that of making disciples of primary leaders in your team. If you have a paid staff, those people should be your top priority...

The King's Speech--The Book Outshines The Movie...

Just finishing one of the best books I've ever read. It so illustrates the power of disciplemaking when the disciplemaker finds meaning in the accomplishment of his disciple. Kind of like Barnabas and Saul of Tarsus.

The book is a little hard to find. An Amazon search brought up a dozen ways to buy the movie but didn't list the book. I had to narrow my search to books in order to find it.

I can understand Amazon since so many people are into video. But they are selling us all short because the film (one of my favorites) simply does no justice to the book or actual history. 

For starters the king was a far more godly man than we see in the movie. Their relationship was far deeper than portrayed in the movie with the two men often meeting three times a week. The king, as a disciple, spent an hour a day doing excercises to stop the stammering. The list goes on.

The wondrous thing about the whole book is the accuracy of the subtitle. The full title is "The King's Speech: How One Man Saved The British Monarchy." At a time when Brits were losing faith in their system and themselves they faced their greatest challenge--Adolph Hitler. I personally don't get the whole "royal" thing, but they do and they needed their king as a symbol of strength in those dark days. While a stammerer would appear week, they got just the opposite. The book depicts Lionel Logue equipping King George VI to speak well long before he became king. When the darkness fell the man was already prepared.

The very cool thing is that most of the world will never hear of Lionel Logue aside from the movie and most will forget him in a very short while. But he materially contributed to the destruction of the Nazis and the freedom we enjoy today.

His life was amplified in the life of his chief disciple. Wish we could each say that about our own lives.

Palestinian Church Planter

  Just came from Istanbul where I taught in a meeting of pastors working in Islamic nations plus a few from Israel.

  Heard of an amazing Palestinian policeman who can only pastor in very small groups. Otherwise he could lose his job, or even his life.

  During the seminars I met some truly amazing people. Most operate "underground" or at least under the radar in order to avoid persecution.

  Got to experience Islam up close on an afternoon off when we visited the famous "Blue Mosque" and the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom).

  Hagia Sophia was a church till the Islamic revolution several centuries ago when it was turned into a mosque with all the Christian art plastered over. Today it is being restored but as a museum, not as a functioning church.

  Read some very interesting Islamic literature. Doesn't seem to square with images we see on television. But did meet some very nice Muslims.

  Back to the pastor in Palestine. He operates a sizeable church by meeting only in groups of two or three people. Anything larger would be dangerous. Yet, he prevails in evangelism and church growth.

  I think of our own experience in Hawaii. We often complain because of the cost of buildings or brag about being forced to meet in a park (illegally) when we started. We know nothing of hardship. But it is hardship that is the secret to this Palestinian pastor's success. He is forced to make disciples while lots of others only talk about it…

Slow Cooking Disciples

  I'm on a Turkish airways flight from London to Istanbul. Been traveling for almost 29 hours and still another hour in the air.

  Had lots of time to think about three men we prayed for in church this weekend. 

  Tom, at age 40, is "graduating from High School Pastor to run Connect, our assimilation ministry. He's also by backup preacher when I travel. 

  Frank is 24. He's moving from the huge Jr Hi ministry he built to become High School Pastor.

  Brad, age 20 just took Frank's job in Jr Hi much like Frank followed Tom as Jr Hi Pastor several years ago.

  Someone challenged me for giving a 20-year-old a hundred plus kids ro care for. But to me, its a no-brainer...

  For one thing, Tom discipled Frank four years in Junior Hi and they've been partnering in the transition of Frank to High School for months.

  Brad came to us at age four, and began as a teachers helper with little kids as soon as he hit Jr Hi. Then as a high schooler he helped Frank run the Jr Hi ministry. After high school he stayed on to help Tom pastor those kids. At age 20, the guy has eight years of pastoral experience.

  So what's my point? Exactly this: "We are very serious about making disciples, and it pays off!" 

  This is just one of a hundred stories I could tell but my plane is about to land.

  But before they make me shut down my computer...did I mention that all of this started when Tom was 12? His brother bribed him to come to MiniChurch--for five bucks. He got saved and the rest has been a slow-cooking disciplship process that always brings good results!!!

Japan: Picking Up More Than Just Pieces...

Very saddened about the horrendous loss of life and disruption for so many thousands for years to come due to the earthquake and damage to the nuclear reactor in Japan.

I was in a plane on the ground when the second quake hit--stayed there for nine hours then lived in the airport for the two days following that. Happy to get out but must admit to feeling sorry for myself while I was there. Hadn't much news and didn't know the enourmity of it all.

Being home, I am so proud of all my Japanese friends and their desire to help the many broken lives. 

Many Americans are sending money to relief organizations (I recommend www.samaritanspurse.org), but some are getting it to local churches. One congregation is asking for a family or a church that they can support for a year to get them back on their feet. One friend is trying to organize just such an effort--though it may be difficult to work out the logistics. The wonderful thing is that they are working through churches to touch broken lives.

Japan has shown an unusual openness toward the gospel in the past two years. My prayer is that this huge setback somehow extends and widens that opening to the one source of eternal comfort and provision.

God is raising a new generation of churches and leaders throughout the country. Please pray for them to be able to do more than relief work. Pray that the Kingdom of God will finally come to Japan in strong measure.

Multiplying Without Restraint

Just finished a week of seminars in Thailand.

I met a man, with no formal education, who has launched 47 highly successful churches. He ministers among the "hill tribes" in the country.

Sadly, the week before (in another Asian nation) I met a man who wants to require that all our pastors be college graduates who also attend a seminary.

That guy would obliterate the ministry of the first man. His restraints would have prevented this church multiplier from being in ministry at all. The guy became a pastor by being discipled by another pastor. He already had a wife and children--hence no time or money to spend for a formal education.

While that would be tragic in itself, there is another dark spot to the restraints of education. The guy who wants to demand education is actually pitting the classroom against the model Jesus left us. He makes the seminary into the "hole in the hourglass," causing it to become an obstacle rather than a blessing. 

We need our schools. But they are best left either to the young, or to the veterans who can do a better job because the school had vision for "in service training."

Let the church turn them into pastors and let the seminary turn them into better pastors...

Prioritize Your Needs

How involved are you in serving the Lord (Or, just keeping lots of balls in the air)?

It is easy to get so busy doing good things that you strikeout when swinging at the balls that really matter.

Most of us are busy—too busy, truth be told. Our world moves at a mad pace and we breathe hard to keep up with it. But we can control our time if we learn to prioritize our needs instead of just prioritizing our schedule.

By that I mean you set your priorities and build your life around them rather than the other way around.

Think of this as scheduling your priorities. List them. Mark out time for them. After that begin to work the demands of life into the remaining hours.  It won't be easy at first, but you'll learn along the way.

Time for God, personal refreshment, dates with your spouse and time spent with children are the only things you'll really regret if your time is swallowed up with other stuff. 

Make life work for you and it will work well.

How To Never Fail...

Want to guarantee that you never fail at anything?

There is a sure-fire formula for never experiencing the pain of failure.

That is to attempt nothing new. It is pretty simple, 100 percent sure. But pretty useless. I've noticed young kids that won't try things till they are reasonably assured of perfection. That is a kid thing. But we should outgrow it as adults.

Too often I meet leaders who press forward with lots of "reasons" why something won't work in their situation. I suspect that they are really hiding behind a fear of failure.

Fear is ugly and is the opposite of faith. Seems a better approach is to build a culture that is friendly to failure. Friendly in that it rewards people for "trying something." When we reward people for trying we will see a lot more home runs, but strikeouts come along with home runs. So The best way to never fail in the long run seems to be to allow for lots of short term failures along the way toward long term sucesses.

 

Small Rocks At Masada

Disciplemaking can seem terribly small when held up against the latest crowd-gathering trick to come down the spiritual highway.

But, I think what held true for a physical temple holds true for the temple that Peter said Jesus is building with people as building-blocks,  "And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple" (1 Peter 2:5).

I recently saw a wonderful example of the importance of small stones in a great wall. If you visit Masada you will see the fortress where 960 weary Jewish rebels committed suicide rather than face slavery by the Roman armies, after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, in 70 AD.

What you may not be aware of is that King Herod the Great built that fortress. It included a magnificent palace and was actually designed to protect him against any insurrection among his own subjects. But what is most interesting to me are the outer walls of the fortress. Perched on the very edge of a steep cliff you must wonder how the workmen managed to place the stones on the outer face of the wall.

But more interesting than that is the fact that the massive protective stones wouldn't be there at all if it were not for rocks smaller than your fist wedged between them. It is the small stones that lock the larger ones in place and help them balance on that precarious slope. Without the small stones the entire fortress would collapse into a meaningless pile of rubble.

I think our disciplemaking efforts are well illustrated by those stones in Herod's wall. We are, as Peter wrote, "living stones." Some are large, powerful and very much in public view. Most are tiny and nearly invisible to those who don't look closely. Yet, we are all necessary to the living temple called church that God is building through his Holy Spirit.

We are not to despise the small beginnings, especially when doing the very thing that Jesus commanded at the climax of his physical time on earth.

Japan Is Rapidly Changing...

 

Japan is rapidly changing. And that change will affect the entire world. So get ready...

The prolonged recession (nearly 20 years there) has brought down prices, set some people free from a 75-hour work week and changed the attitude of the country.

The declining birth rate has made marriages to foreigners far more acceptable. Hence foreigners are more acceptable and less likely to be accused of any crime in the neighborhood.

Even agriculture is changing. A decade ago you couldn't import foreign rice into Japan. Now much of it is imported. This is due to "just-in-time" delivery of goods to stores. It is easier to controll the movement of foodstuffs if they are created and stored in other countries. But, it leaves the nation with only a three-day food supply and an increasing dependance on near neighbors. Pray that these nations continue to get along...

All of this makes life easier for the church. The number of "overseas Japanese," or people who decided to follow Christ while living in another country has always been about six times as large as the average church attendance in the country. Believe it--some pastors actually resent these overseas converts and don't want them in their churches. And Japanese churches have been traditionally rigid and legalistic.

All of this is changing, too. There are several churches numbering around 1,000 (mostly very young) Japanese in Tokyo. Church planting is growing rapidly. And house churches are multiplying like rabbits. It seems that the spiritual awakening so many have prayed for is finally beginning to happen. It is a fun time to serve in partnership with Japanese Christians.