This week’s
post isn’t something drawn out of Sunday’s sermon, but from Saturday’s
Leadership Huddle.
Dinita and I
presented two different focuses at the fourth Leadership Huddle on Saturday.
Dinita presented some insightful and helpful keys to helping people take
relationships deeper through asking transformational questions. This is the “up
close and personal” aspects of ministry. It is the one on one, let’s get to the
core issues of change in a person’s life. We looked at many of the difficulties
we face when trying to work with individuals to help them be all that God wants
them to be.
I then showed
an Andy Stanley leadership video on the importance of ministry momentum and how
to get it and sustain it. For all of us there, the light bulb went on. A key
thought that was stated in the introduction was “If you have momentum and you
don’t know why, you are just one stupid decision away from destroying your
momentum.” So that we need to evaluate even when things are going well to know
why they are going well. It’s also so true that when you don’t have momentum,
everything is difficult. And it is critical that we understand the dynamics and
take action to get momentum and then sustain it.
One huge
question that we only gave passing attention to was “How do we measure
momentum?” If business momentum is measured by financial gain or loss and
sports momentum is posted on the score board, what does the church need to look
at to gage its level of momentum?
But while so
critical to the whole subject, that is not the purpose of this post.
During the
prayer time at the end, I sensed the Lord pointing out something. The two
subject matters were extreme in their polarity. One the one end is the
personal, individual relationships and transformation. On the other end was the
ministry program. Of doing ministry together.
Both are
essential. The danger and I think propensity for most of us is to focus on the “program”
end of things. “If we get the program going, we’ll be set.” There is great
danger in that. It “depersonalizes” the issue and removes personal responsibility.
We blame the lack of transformation on the program when in fact real live
change comes in the context of relationships.
Programs
provide a platform where relationships can develop. But programs on their own
will not produce the life change (which is our primary score card for measuring
momentum).
We must have
programs with momentum, but we also need to focus on developing momentum in the
area of personal ministry.
