Yes,  the ministry tip is making a comeback.  No, its not a monday ministry tip but an insight I received this weekend church planting.  

Here is the tip and then I will tell the story.

Tip:  When adversity hits, God is giving you an opportunity to develop your ministry.

The example:

This week I got a call I hate to get late Saturday night.  Brad, who is my best friend and  Co-Pastor at Green Hills Church called me at 9:30 on Saturday night sick as a dog.  He asked if there was anyway that he could sit out set up Sunday and maybe even church.  I told him of course it wouldn’t be a problem so I came over and picked up our sunday gear and trailer so that he wouldn’t have to get out.   Now the problem is this.  Brad is invaluable on Sunday mornings.  When he said that he couldn’t be there my heart sank a little bit because Brad does so much on Sunday to help us get ready for church that I envisioned a rough Sunday morning.  I was preaching and wasn’t looking forward to scrambling all morning and then getting up tired to preach.  On Sunday mornings we do an extensive set up and clean up of the Bar that we meet at.  But then I remembered: When adversity hits, God is giving you an opportunity to develop your ministry.

I decided that God was giving me an opportunity to get some other guys involved in ministry and some of the guys who had been serving already to step up to the next level.  I texted 2 of our guys who don’t serve on Sundays on the set up team and asked them to come the next morning.  I also contacted 2 of my best guys and asked them to come 30 minutes early.  I shared with all of them the reason why I needed them there and to my amazement they were really excited about serving.

Sunday morning was the fastest set up we have ever had.  We were done 30 minutes early and the guys were excited to be there.  Our prayer time before our set up time was electric.  I even had one of our leaders suggest that we figure out how to get the team stronger so that Brad and I dont have to come do set up.  God was at work because of adversity.  

Try it this week.  Adversity makes you come up with solutions that you probably should have implemented anyway.

One of the most difficult endeavors is to wait on God’s provision.  I know that there is a huge temptation for all of us in ministry to just go out and make things happen for God.  The problem is that in doing that we leave God out of our plans.  Ministry just becomes what we can scheme or pull off.  There is very little room for the invisible God to direct or interfere with our work.  Instead of ministry we are left with a church business.

Henry Blackaby talks about seeing God at work and joining Him.  That is an amazing view of ministry.  Coming to a realization that God is at work all around us and if we choose to follow his leading he will make what we are doing flower and produce great fruit.  The scary thing about seeing God as the primary cog in our ministry is that you have to wait on his timing and provision.  

God’s timing and his provision is usually what I fret about most.  I want God to provide on my timetable and in the way I want him to work.  But God isn’t a predictable and controllable being.  Thats what makes serving him so exciting.  I was reminded about this the other day.  We were excited about starting a new ministry in our church.  We felt that God was leading us in starting this ministry but the catch was we didn’t have the money or volunteers to pull it off. 

We decided to wait on God’s provision and pray about it instead of pulling it off ourselves.  It has been so exciting to see God work in this time of waiting.  It has been a couple of months of us waiting on God but in that time we have seen God donate the equipment, and volunteers we needed.  We just needed some computer software to be able to pull it off.  Last Friday, I got a message from an old friend who told me God had laid it on his heart to provide the computer software we needed and he purchased it for us within the hour.

Through all this I have been humbled.  I got a chance to see God once again as provider and his way of providing was so much better than my sterile plans.  So the tip is this:  prayer and waiting on God is the best way to find success and fulfillment in ministry.

I know that every person who is in ministry feels like they work all the time.  Serving in a ministry entails a lot of energy and personal investment.  Along with all the personal, hands on ministry and teaching that everyone sees, there are countless hours of hard thankless administrative and preparatory work. If you aren’t careful, you can easily burn out and become emotionally and physically drained.  

A couple of years ago I had a friend who introduced me to the idea of implementing finish lines.  A finish line is a moment that you designate as quitting time.  When you cross the finish line it is a moment of personal Sabbath.  You cease from working, thinking about work and talking about work.   It can be a time of day every week, or a once a week finish line, but it is important to define when your finish line exists.  It is even more important to keep your finish lines every time. 

In my life, I have an off day (Friday) that I don’t keep and technically Saturday is not a work day, but I usually find something work related to do on both those days.  Usually I am working on a message or some important task, and even though I should honor Friday as a day off, its really hard not to get sucked into work.  

But, my finish line is Sunday after Lunch.  We often go to lunch with people from Church so that technically still is work because I am still in Pastor mode, but after lunch on Sundays I am done.  I can completely rest.  I stop thinking about church, I stop thinking about work and I just rest.  I can hang out with Tabitha and Bailey and enjoy life.

I encourage you to pick a finish line.  Its not an easy thing to do but it is very worth it.  Even God took a Sabbath after creating the world.  Its a great example of how valuable rest can be.  I hope that you too can choose a time and a day where you say, my work is done.  Now I can focus on family, fun and God.

Everyone who prepares messages on a weekly basis knows how difficult it is to continue to bring fresh insight and background information to a message.  So to all you faithful students of God’s word and practitioners of the sweet science of preaching I thought I would pass along my 4 favorite resources for NT study.  

“Jewish New Testament Commentary” By David H. Stern

David Stern is a scholar who attempts to keep the Bible in its traditional Jewish roots instead of westernizing it.  He does a great job of giving the true meaning to idioms and sayings that get lost in translation, both in the translation from Greek to English and from Jewish to American culture.

Here is his Wiki Bio:  David H. Stern (1935 – ) born in Los Angeles is an Israel-based Messianic Jewish theologian.

Stern’s major work is the Complete Jewish Bible, his English translation of the Old Testament and New Testament (which Messianics refer to by the Hebrewphrase from the book of the prophet Jeremiah/Yirmeyahu chapter 31, “B’rit Chadashah,” New Covenant). One of the ways in which he treats the issue is to leave most of the proper nouns in their transliterated form, and for the New Testament to replace Greek proper nouns with transliterated Hebrew or words. He calls this the ‘cosmetic’ treatment. Other decisions include translating Greek phrases about ‘the law’ as having to do with ‘Torah-legalism’ instead. More explanation is found in his Messianic Jewish Manifesto (now out of print) and his Messianic Judaism: A Modern Movement With an Ancient Past (a revision of ‘Messianic Jewish Manifesto’).

Dr. Stern’s background includes a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, graduate work at the University of Judaism, and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. He taught the first course in ‘Judaism and Christianity’ at Fuller Theological Seminary and at UCLA he was a professor.

I hope you enjoy him!

“Jesus the Messiah” By Alfred Edersheim

This is a great book to get a very Jewish perspective on Jesus’ ministry.  It was written by a Jewish scholar in 1183.  I have found that it doesn’t talk about everything in the gospels but it has a lot of very important information that can help fill out a message nicely.

“The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament”  By Cleon L Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III. 

This resource is very helpful when it comes to understanding the Greek and parsing your verbs.  I have found it to be great in checking my Greek work.  Ok I usually look at this first instead of trying to figure out if  the scribble I am looking at is an imperfect participle or an aortive verb.  Surprisingly Rogers and Rogers also has some commentary insights that are very helpful.

“The New Daily Study Bible” By William Barclay

Ok so this is really not a study Bible but it is a 17 volume commentary set.  Barclay has some interesting tendencies and some people may not like him  because he was an admitted universalis.  But his work on the New Testament is amazing and he tries to address every view that you may come across in a passage.  Barclay is really insightful and practical.  

Here is his Wikipedia bio:  William Barclay (5 December 1907, Wick – 24 January 1978, Glasgow) was an author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister andProfessor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow.

While professor, he decided to dedicate his life to “making the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader”. The eventual result was the Daily Study Bible, a set of 17 commentaries on the New Testament, published by Saint Andrew Press, the Church of Scotland’s publishing house. Despite the series name, these commentaries do not set a program of regular study. Rather, they go verse by verse through Barclay’s own translation of the New Testament, listing and examining every possible interpretation known to Barclay and providing all the background information he considered possibly relevant, all in layman’s terms. The commentaries were fully updated with the help of William Barclay’s son, Ronnie Barclay, in recent years and they are now known as the New Daily Study Bible series.

While this detailed approach is not to everyone’s liking, the 17 volumes of the set were all instant best-sellers and continue to be so to this day. A companion set giving a similar treatment to the Old Testament was endorsed but not written by Barclay.

Barclay wrote many other popular books, always drawing on scholarship but written in a highly accessible style. In The Mind of Jesus (1960) he states that his aim was “to make the figure of Jesus more vividly alive, so that we may know him better and love him more”.

Ok so this is really a Tuesday morning Ministry Tip, but I got bogged down in meetings yesterday.   

Today I want to give some tips on encouragement.  Doing ministry is really hard and as leaders we need to be aware of the fact that both we and the people who work alongside us get tired and worn out.  A key role in the life of any leader is to encourage himself/herself and to encourage those around them.  So I am going to drop a few ideas out there on how to encourage yourself and how to encourage others.  Hopefully this will be helpful.

Encouraging others:

Encouragement is vital to any ministry.  This is because every ministry thrives on happy volunteers that are able to unlock and use their spiritual gifts and natural talents.  Serving God is exciting stuff and we need to continue to foster a passion for that service through our encouragement.  Here are 3 ways to encourage others.

1.  Write notes.  Yes I know it is tedious but it is the most effective way by far to encourage others.  Writing a personal, hand written note on paper is volunteer gold.  I prefer to keep it short, personal, up beat and encouraging.  Its great to share an inside joke, remark about something specific that they did that was above and beyond ordinary, and then tell them how you have seen God use them and how they are growing.  I cant tell you how encouraging a not can be to someone who is struggling. 

2. Throw a party.  I think that having an annual party is a wonderful way to say to your volunteers that you value them.  I like to do this at Christmas.  Having a dinner and a time of sharing is a great way to cast vision and make your volunteers feel like they are serving with a family of friends not alone on an island.

3.  Individual verbal pep talk.  I think one of the most valuable ways to encourage people is to praise them in front of their peers or to point out something they are doing well.  For many people words of affirmation are a huge need and I have found that people dont get enough positive encouragement and crave it.  Just telling people that they are awesome and you are thankful for them goes a long way.  I try to tell everyone that is serving on Sundays how much I value their service to God.

Encouraging yourself:

Sometimes it is tough to keep serving God without having a perspective of what He has done through you.  I often see many of my fellow co-laborers struggle with being positive.  Here are a couple of ways I manage to keep motivated and encouraged.

Look back on how far you have come.  One of the things that breeds frustration more than anything else is to feel like you are wasting your time.  When I look back at how far God has led me and how I have grown over the last year, or several years, that is a source of encouragement.  Knowing that God is developing me to be more like himself and that I am in the process of becoming keeps me from feeling like my life is stagnant.  Often the best growth is the slowest and by looking backward we can see how much God has been developing us.  Keeping a journal is a fantastic tool to be encouraged by what God has done in and through you.

Celebrate Lifechange.  Nothing motivates me more than to see people that I have been praying for and serving grow in their faith.  I try to keep my eyes on the people I am loving and notice that God is using me to make a difference.  

Look at some stories of Bible characters who encountered adversity.  Many times it is hard to remain upbeat when you don’t know how things will turn out.  I have found that God has encouraged me to continue to have faith by looking at the lives of Joseph, Abraham, David, and Job.  

Talk to an encouraging friend.   Sometimes the best medicine is to pick up the phone and talk to someone who believes in you and loves you.  God puts people in our lives who can lift our spirits and speak words of wisdom and advice to us when we really need it.  

I hope these ideas are helpful to you.  I know that encouragement is a discipline we all need to grow in.  Let me know if you have any other tips that would be helpful to pass along to others!

Tune in next monday for next week’s tip.  I am going to be talking about Volunteer recruiting.  If you have any ideas of some things you want me to address let me know.  By the way, I am going to attempt to post more often so stay tuned.