BLeach

One Way Conversations

Each week during our Conversations with Jesus series we're introducing that week's small group focus via video. The video also works to launch the meet and greet time during the service. Here's the video we showed yesterday.

For what it's worth, Chris and I are considering taking our act on the road.

He'll sing.

I'll groove.

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Revelation Overload

You've probably heard of information overload.  Considering you live in the 21st century you've probably experienced it. 

The past two days for me have been revelation overload.  Imagine the feeling of sitting at the last session of a first class, two-day conference.  You've got a binder full of information and you still can't write fast enough to get everything down that the speaker is saying.  That's how I've felt since Monday, except the speaker has been God.  I've had my laptop on and my prayer journal open but I haven't been able to type/write fast enough to record everything He's said to me. 

I think God has to speak to us in spurts, especially when He's speaking revelation.  There's only so much we can take at a time.  This week God took me to my limit.  It's as if He's revealed to me more about His plan for my life in two days than He has in the past two years.  I'm pretty sure that's not true, but at the end of the two days it feels like it's true.

Two thoughts about the experience (since I don't have room here for 2,222 thoughts).

The revelation gifts of knowledge and prophecy (1 Corinthians 12) are for real.  After these two days I can personally prove it.  Four different people, all from different states, either got together in an elaborate conspiracy or supernaturally heard from God for me.  After what God has just done I feel so spoiled.  For two straight days He took a flourescent magic marker and wrote me messages in the sky.  I'm so thankful.

God really, really, really loves us.  He desires to speak to us.  His heart is to guide us.  He gets a kick out of proving Himself to us.  If we will put ourselves in strategic positions to hear from Him, we will.

Warrior Leaders

I got back to MIchigan today from a gathering of young church planters in Allison Park, PA.  Johannes Amritzer spent two days teaching, inspiring, and prophesying over us.  In the words of Johannes, it was fantastic (written with a thick Southern European accent).

During our time together he gave us 9 principles of warrior leadership from the leadership life of David the Warrior King.  Here are the five he gave us on Monday.

Don't ever stop going to war.  Johannes hammered this point.  He quoted the 8 words that were at the root of David's greatest failure.  One evening David got up from his bed...(2 Sam. 11.2).  It was the time for kings to fight, but David was sleeping through the afternoon.  The best way for a leader to stay fit is to keep making war.

Choose leaders who are devoted to you.  These were David's mighty men...they gave his kingship strong support (1 Chron. 11.10).  These guys were heroes, but here's the partnership.  They would not have been heroes without David as their leader, and David would not have been a leader without his heroes.  Also check out verse 18 and 2 Chronicles 12.18.

Warriors are born on the battlefield.  If you want to raise up warriors, you have to be a warrior yourself.  If a leader lives in sexual immorality and preaches purity, his fruit will be sexual immorality.  If a leader lives prayer and preaches giving, he will reproduce people who pray.  In other words, we pass on more through anointing then words.  I can only give what I live.  Here's the question that came to me.  When I complain about what I don't have, am I also complaining about what I don't do?  (1 Chronicles 12.2,8).

Choose leaders according to what they achieve.  Talk is cheap.  Reward people who are doing it.  Why would I appoint an evangelism coordinator who hasn't led anyone to Jesus in a year?  In 2 Chronicles 11.6 David had a position to fill; commander in chief of his army.  Did he setup interviews?  Did he log on to commanderinchiefwannabes.com?  He gave his men a challenge.  Whoever leads the attack on the Jebusites will become commander-in-chief.  Joab went up first.  Joab got the job.

Releasing leaders is binding leaders.  This is one of my core convictions.  Some leaders become tight-fisted with people, fighting to keep them.  The opposite happens.  But when we decide our role is to serve people's dreams and set them free, we win leaders for life.  Read Exodus 21.5-6.  Read it again.  That's reality.  Johannes said it like this.  We are not bound by chains.  We're bound by love.

Authority

Tonight I had the opportunity to meet Ron Johnson, pastor of Bethel Temple in Hampton, Virginia.  In addition to pastoring his church, God has brought him into relationship with hundreds of church planters all over the world.  He currently oversees a network of several hundred churches.  I asked him how it developed and was blown away by his story.  He didn't set out to develop a network of churches.  It happened naturally as young men he had committed to serve in turn sought out relationship with him. 

The thought he shared that stuck out to me was about ministry authority.  There are two kinds: political authority and spiritual authority.  Spiritual authority is given to us by God and when a leader has it, others are drawn to him naturally.  He doesn't have to seek it or fight to keep it.  Political authority is positional authority, and can only be maintained by political posturing and leveraging. 

Someone with political authority ends up abusing relationships in order to protect his position.  A leader with spiritual authority is free to serve others without fear of losing position or title, since it was never his to begin with. 

Guess which type of authority Jesus had?

Church Planting Gathering

I just checked into the Holiday Inn in Allison Park, PA (just outside of Pittsburgh).  I'm here with my good friend and fellow church planter Bobby Hawk for a gathering of young church planters.  The two-day event is being hosted by Jeff Leake at Allison Park Church.  A few years ago Jeff was faced with a space problem at his church.  They had run out of seats and parking spaces.  He went to prayer to ask God how to proceed with a building plan and wound up surprised by what he heard.  God challenged him to wait on the building project and instead plant 5 new churches in 5 years. 

That's what he did.

I was drawn to Jeff's story the first time I heard it.  It resonated with me.  I didn't know then that God would give me a relationship with him.  Last year I was able to attend the first gathering of church planters.  This year it's even bigger.  I think there will be about 65 of us tomorrow.

The speaker is a young man in his early 30's named Johannes Amritzer.  He is the founder of Mission SOS.  He has planted over 300 churches.  He's also back for the second time this year.  Last year God used him to spark a profound paradigm shift in my thinking about my own role in church planting.  The new thoughts have just taken shape in me within the last month, but as I've started to process them out loud I can trace their origins back to this time last April with Johannes. 

Needless to say I've got high expectations for the next two days.

I'm thinking about coming home to plant some more churches!

Spring Forward

Tonight's the night.  Don't forget to move your clock forward an hour.  Whoever schedules the Final Four should really avoid scheduling it over daylight savings time.  Staying up for the end of the late game would be tough for me as it is.  Add to it one less hour of sleep, and I'm faced with a difficult dilemma.  Do I watch the LSU, UCLA drama and come into church groggy in the morning, or do the responsible thing and go to bed an hour early?  Tough calll.

For what it's worth, as a pastor, daylight savings time is much more enjoyable in the fall then in the spring.  In the fall the people who forget to change their clocks show up early for church.  We recruit them for setup and prayer! 

I do enjoy one part of springing forward.  For those who forget and come to church as usual, their's nothing like seeing their facial expression when they walk in for the 9.00 am service at 10.10.  I have a perfect view since I'm often speaking at that time. 

So if it's you tomorrow, and you see a smile crease my face when you walk in, don't take it personally.  Take your seat, listen to the rest of the message, then stay for the second service until I get to the same point in my message again.  You may not get the whole service in order, but you'll get it all!

Happy spring!

Untold Stories

The last verse in John's biography of Jesus amazes me everytime I read it.

Jesus did many other things as well.  If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written (John 21.25).

Turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana: Amazing!

Opening the eyes of a man who'd never seen: Astounding!

Calling a dead man out of his grave: Breathtaking!

But the real eye-opener is the last verse.  These stories are just a taste.  At a well in Samaria Jesus broke every rule of racism.  How many more wells did he visit?  At Lazarus funeral Jesus wept with the mourners.  How many more tears did he shed?  His insights on truth (John 8), leadership (John 10), persecution (John 15) and joy (John 16) are still revolutionary.  How many other sermons did he preach?

I think that one of the most enjoyable surprises of heaven will be the stories.  Every time I open the gospels I see something fresh.  But the stories recorded by four of Jesus' biographers are just the beginning of what He actually did.  John doesn't even start the story until Jesus is 30.  What about his first 29 years?  We know that as a 12 year old boy He amazed the most educated Jews around.  Don't you think he had other moments as a teenager that caused people to scratch their heads and say, "Where does this kid come with this stuff?" 

Jesus is still doing His thing!  We all have our stories today.  We don't have one book that has them all recorded.  And we don't have time to tell them all.  But when time turns into eternity we will. 

If you've ever wondered how you could keep praising God forever without ever getting bored, think about this.  There will be no ending to the stories that will cause us to lose our composure, dance, and shout "Jesus, You're the God-Man!"