Open To Change
The Values of Ministry • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 5 viewsNotes
Transcript
Hello Dream Team! Before we jump in to this thought today, I want to start by expressing to you how thankful Stella and I are for all that you do! This year alone, as a team we have lead hundreds to a new commitment with Jesus, we have seen dozens baptized, and hundreds are being discipled to live like Jesus. We are a church on a mission, and we are being successful. As we like to say; “We are getting the gospel in every home”. And that would not be true if it were not for the work that you are doing on this team.
Everything we do as a ministry comes down to teamwork. You might say, well isn’t it about the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, and the Gospel? And, yes, it is all those things. But God works through people.
12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
God is the greatest leader the world will ever know. Every thing you know about the move of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, revival, healing, you name it; this is God working with a team. He has chosen to reserve His work to be executed through people. So if the church is going to reflect God, and model the character of God, which is how we evangelize the world, we must do so in keeping with Gods practice. Which means that one of the greatest disciplines the church must master is that of leading teams, and building teams.
As teams grow, the need for clear vision, becomes greater and greater. As anything grows, the foundation upon which it is built becomes of greater importance. At Living Faith Church we operate with a clear vision to get The Gospel In Every Home. But there is a set of clear values, or organizational attitudes that define our behavior. Because how something is done is equal to it being or not being done. As a parent I often would tell my kids, if you clean your room with a bad attitude, that is equal to it not being done at all.
Many years ago I bought myself a Schwinn bicycle. I saw one at Scotts bicycle shop here in Hermiston, but I could not afford the price. So, I wen’t to Walmart and found a very similar Schwinn bicycle for half the price. I thought to myself, I’m not stupid, I’ll buy the lesser expensive bike that has all the same features. A year later I was riding my bicycle up a hill, and about half way up the hill, when I was pushing those pedals as hard as I could, the peddle broke of the sprocket. This obviously left the bicycle unusable. When I took the bicycle into Scotts to have it repaired, I had got no further than just inside the front door when he announced - “oh, you have a Walmart Schwinn”. I asked, how do you know it’s from Walmart? He didn’t answer that question exactly, however, he could name every part that was replaced with cheap metal or plastic to make the bicycle less expense. The bike looked good, and it didn’t cost that much, but it could not last the test.
Today, I want to share with you a value that Living Faith Church operates under. It is a behavior that ensure we will last for generations to come. We actually have four of these values. They are:
We put people first
We are open to change
We build together
We have fun.
Today, I want to talk about being open to change. The prophet Isaiah prophesied to the nation of Israel these words in Isaiah 43.
19 “Behold, I will do something new, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert.
The nation of Israel had Babylonian exile for 70 years. Meaning there was an entire generation of people that living under this captivity was all they knew. And now God says, something new is coming. I’m making a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. These two idioms speak to the idea that God is going to do something that does not make sense, as a river in a desert does not make sense.
These is one thing I think we can count on in life, and that would be change. Change is constant. Change never changes. And if there is one organization on earth that really struggles to change, I think we could safely say, it would be the church. Many revivals have seen their demise when religious systems tried to conform revival to their organizational standard.
Solomon in all of his wisdom learned one thing that he has passed on to us today.
1 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
2 A time to give birth and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
In other words, shift happens. Change is constant. John Maxwell says “Change is inevitable, growth is optional”.
For Living Faith Church, we value change, we embrace change. This doesn’t mean we change for change sake. But rather, we change for vision sake. Homes all across America are changing at a rapid pace. Just 10 years ago I was driving to the closes RedBox to get a DVD, and now I have DVD’s in a drawer underneath my TV, and instead of getting off my couch, I click rent on Amazon Prime.
I remember when I first started attending Living Faith Church, we used to give a jar of cookie dough to everyone who visited on a Sunday. Now just the thought of that makes me laugh just a bit. Post COVID this sounds like the most ridiculous idea ever.
Did you know that your skin sheds 30,000 skin cells every minute.
Stagnate water, without a steady flow is deadly
Air molecules, even in room temperature with no wind move at a rate of 400 meters per second. And if this air circulation did not happen, all living matter would die of suffocation.
Change is vital to survival. So when we say that we are open to change, what we are recognizing is that God has designed the church to adjust, and stretch to reach the ever changing culture we live in.
I find that a church like ours is good at this, and we think of it often in the context of music, and preaching. However, we may struggle to think of it in the context of how an individual department should remain flexible to how it interacts with the people inside the teams. Just as Jesus dealt with the disciples differently pre-resurrection and post-resurrection, so we must learn to adjust and change to the needs of people. We don’t change our culture, and we don’t change our vision, however our strategy adjusts accordingly.
One of the best and most efficient ways we can be open to change is by seeking feedback. There are four layers of feedback. You can be:
Closed to feedback
Indifferent to feedback
Open to feedback
and Seeking feedback
Open to feedback would be basecamp for a Living Faith Church leader. But to seek feedback is where we all need to be. To seek feedback is to invite and encourage every team player to share what is going well and how they feel things could be better.
If this scares you, good! It should. That means you are passionate about where you serve. But I promise you that you do not see the ministry the same way the people you are serving with do.
22 Without consultation, plans are frustrated, But with many counselors they succeed.
There is a difference between critical feedback and a critical spirit. We are not talking about a critical spirit or attitude, but rather, being open to change means we are teaching our teams to care so much that they constantly are evaluating the departments success in the vision.
Everything from - the kids checkin process, the readiness of teams at sound check, and espresso preparation process, and welcome teams - everything matters.
One of our churches best resources is available to every team member who serves. It is called a feedback form. And I want us to literally preach the feedback form weekly. If you are not seeing your team filling these outs, this means either they are nervous to share their opinion, or they don’t think deeply enough about what is happening to fill anything out. But hear me! This is the lifeblood of your area. It is the most efficient way for your area to know how people are feeling. So let’s be open to change by seeking feedback in every service, from every team member.
And, you will notice that things need to change, and people have opinions, and some things you cannot accomplish. That’s OK. This is not a voting process to run your department according to the needs of the people. But, this is a way for your eyes to be opened to things you don’t see because you are so close.
Right now, I’m going to turn this team meeting back over to your pastor. I want each of you, before the night is over, to fill out a feedback form on this team meeting. Because we are always working to make sure we are do all we can to lead, build and pastor you well.
