Robert E Rasmussen.com

This excerpt from THE AMAZING POTENTIAL OF ONE SURRENDERED CHURCH (p. 86-87) considers the leadership dynamic that led to the sending out of two key leaders as missionaries.

In “ministering to the Lord,” the Antioch leaders offered to God those things that please Him. What did that likely involve? Surely, they worshiped Him in prayer and song (Colossians 3:16), and confessed their sins to God and one another (James 5:16). They read and discussed the Word of God (1 Timothy 3:16). They expressed their gratitude to God for His grace in granting them salvation, and interceded for their relatives who had not yet come to faith. They prayed for their church to be in line with God’s desires, and they prayed for personal holiness and strength as fathers and husbands. They offered these ministries to God, not in a single meeting, but repeatedly over an extended time.

Often church leaders today view other members of the local Body of believers with impatience, wishing they would show greater commitment and sacrifice. The life of the Antioch elders reminds us of the need to begin the transformation within the circle of leaders, knowing that when leaders draw near to the Lord the people will not fail to see the effect.

You can imagine the response of most congregations if their leaders came to them and said, “We have been in an extended time of prayer and fasting. We have met for many hours, often on our knees before the Lord. We’ve studied His Word, and it has convicted us of sin in our lives, which we’ve confessed to God and to each other. We have sought God’s direction for our church, and after much soul-searching, this is what we believe God would have us do next as a church. . . .”

What would such spirituality in our leadership do for our churches? The vast majority of our congregations want nothing more than to be led by people who are listening to God. They will sacrifice their time and finances for that which God has clearly led their church to do.

FOR DISCUSSION

1. If your leadership team was to spend a season in seeking God’s direction, what would such a time look like for you? How would you initiate such a process?

Here is an excerpt from THE AMAZING POTENTIAL OF ONE SURRENDERED CHURCH, p.14, that talks about how a few individuals can shape the cultural make-up of their local congregation:

A church today might be surprised if they spent a day discussing, “Who are the people we usually speak to?” Every church has its habits, including certain conversations it has and certain ones it does not. It would help to then ask, “Who are the people we don’t usually speak to?” with the follow-up, “Why don’t we?” Precedent blindfolds us.

Our churches are in towns or cities in which diverse kinds of people intermingle with each other but don’t really see each other because they move around in different layers of interaction. For example, I (a Caucasian living in North America) can walk by a nearby school and pass a man from India who wears a turban, but I don’t think of befriending him or even greeting him because he lives in a different layer than I do. I figure he wants to be left alone. He and his family speak, eat, and worship near me, maybe even next door, but they are hidden by my precedent of getting to know people who are similar to me.

But the Antioch story would not have been told if everyone stuck with precedent, if all had continued doing ministry the familiar way, speaking only to people similar to themselves. There would only have been a Jewish congregation or two, rather than the Gentile church that had such amazing impact. What were needed were a few ground-breaking innovators who envisioned a church where everyone else saw people-we-don’t-often-talk-to.

FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the cultural and economic “layers” (i.e. groups of people) in your town or region, and what kind of people are in them?
2. What layer(s) currently feel comfortable in your church?

I am a beginner in the self-publishing world, but it has been an exciting start. THE AMAZING POTENTIAL OF ONE SURRENDERED CHURCH is not a candidate for a publishing house, yet is a useful tool in the hands of a pastor who desires to open up new ministry vistas for his leadership team. So, self-publishing appeared as the next step to take for this manuscript.

And it is proving to be an education! There are many experts out there, who can tell you a lot more than I can. But I am thankful for some colleagues who have gone down this road ahead of me and can share the lessons they have learned. Learning to work with the online tools for formatting and proofing has been terrific, and very time consuming.

But the biggest challenge is distribution. Without the built-in channels of a publishing house, the self-published author has to do a lot of strategizing and labor. One of my major strategies is to ask friends I have made over the years to distribute a complementary copy to church leaders in their area. This will get the book into leaders hands so they can see its value for their church. Giving away books is an expensive distribution plan! I am praying that as leaders see the value of this tool, they will order copies for their colleagues, thus replenishing our supply to print and mail more books. I can do this only because I am not funding this project personally, nor am I receiving any royalties from it. I am much more excited about hearing stories of churches helped toward greater effectiveness.

So the adventure continues!