Sermon Tone Analysis

BRINGING BELIEVABILITY IN A RURAL CHURCH CONTEXT

Introduction

Good morning everyone my name is Jason Parker and I am the Lead Pastor at Woods Harbour Wesleyan Church which is a church located in the rural community of Woods Harbour.

The community has just a few hundred people.

We are about 20 minutes from Barrington and about 40 minutes from Yarmouth.

Our church is 85 years old.

I should tell you just a little about myself.

I grew up in a small fishing community much like the one I am in now.

The community is Canso Nova Scotia, the exact opposite end of the province.

My family were all fishermen and God called me to fish for people.

Jesus radically got a hold of my life late in my teen years.

I was addicted to drugs and drank all the time and lived a life totally separate from God. Jesus radically changed my life as a 19 year old and Jesus freed my from my addictions and called me into ministry almost immediately.

I was discipled at a place called Harvest House and lots of opportunity to do all kinds of ministry there.

After that I youth pastored, led worship and did kids ministry.

God called me to prepare for long term ministry at Kingswood.

I worked at Kingswood after graduating for almost 4 years.

Part way through my time at Kingswood I started experiencing a real restlessness and couldn’t put my finger on it.

Honestly, I believe the grace of God to do the task I was doing was lifting off of me because God was calling me to pastoral ministry.

I never expected to pastor an established rural church.... EVER.

I saw myself doing the work of an evangelist, becoming a professor or church planting but definitely not pastoring a rural, established congregation.

So I didn’t take any classes on how to run a church or how to lead a board meeting or any of that.

So if you are here today and you just feel this constant I don’t know what I am doing welcome to the club.

But I hope that some things I share today might inspire you and encourage you.

I think this is an important point to say that I am young, inexperienced with less than 2 years of leading a church under my belt.

I have so much to learn.

But I do feel like the Lord has blessed us so far at Woods Harbour and I do feel like there are some specific things that are contributing to the growth we are experiencing that might be helpful so today I would like to share about

BRINGING BELIEVABILITY IN A RURAL CHURCH CONTEXT

The Call Story

My wife and I were called to this church almost two years ago to split one full time position in half.

I will spare you the details but I will just say I did not want to come to any kind of rural context.

My wife and I specifically wanted to be an urban context and through God’s supernatural grace we were called specifically to this church and to these rural communities.

Looking back it is without question my wife and I were called to these communities.

The Story

People have asked me a lot about what specifically we are doing and often times I wouldn’t really know what to say right off that bat.

And so today I would like to take some time to point to what I think the Lord has done to cause us to experience the growth that we have.

When I arrived at Woods Harbour Wesleyan in July 2017 I immediately observed some things.

1.

The church had lost hope

2. Lost passion

3. Lacked a clear concise vision.

Honestly the first season of me being at Woods Harbour i felt so compelled to share the optimism God has for that particular context.

So I preached messages from the pulpit on what God could do and I literally felt the Spirit of God lift the despair and breathe hope and optimism.

I preached on this passage and started expressing to the church the potential it has because of the resurrection power of Jesus at work.

Preach the potential

One of the primary functions of preaching is to combat oppressive things that hold back a local congregation from moving forward with God’s mission.

I also started preaching through the book of Ephesians to help the church be reminded of who they are in Christ and what Christ has done for them to help them raise their optimism.

My theology of the church is that the

Christopher Wright along with other people who are part of the missional church movement argue that the Church exist for the mission of God.

This is so foundational to my philosophy of ministry.

If God has called you to a specific context then he has a game-plan.

Your job as a leader is to discern what the game-plan is, be captivated by that and share that with those God has given you to influence.

Dwight Robertson said that “The Church is God’s Plan A to reach the World and there is no Plan B.”

If the capital C church exists for God’s mission than our local churches exist for God’s mission in our own unique context.

A huge part of the discerning process is discovering what is God’s unique mission for your church for your unique context.

If God has called you to a specific context then he has a game-plan.

Your job as a leader is to discern what the game-plan is, be captivated by that and share that with those God has given you to influence.

You need to labour in prayer until the Spirit of God reveals to you what the unique mission your local church has.

And not only do you need to pray about it you need to gather with key influencers and other people in your congregation and begin to ask the Spirit what your unique mission is.

One of the problems with looking at what other people are doing and making a carbon copy and trying to force their mold on your unique context is God wants to use your unique church, with your unique people, with their unique gifts to reach your unique communities.

While it is so key to learn as much as we can from other models I think the most important key as it relates to the mission of God for your unique context is to find out from the Father Why your church exists as it relates to the mission of God?

Once you have found that out you have found your WHY?

FIND YOUR MISSIONAL WHY

2. FIND YOUR MISSIONAL WHY

If God has called you to a specific context then he has a game-plan.

Your job as a leader is to discern what the game-plan is, be captivated by that and share that with those God has given you to influence.

Fallen Condition Focus

People have asked me a lot about what specifically we are doing and often times I wouldn’t really know what to say right off that bat.

And so today I would like to take some time to point to what I think the Lord has done to cause us to experience the growth that we have.

High Points

People have asked me a lot about what specifically we are doing and often times I wouldn’t really know what to say right off that bat.

And so today I would like to take some time to point to what I think the Lord has done to cause us to experience the growth that we have.

3. Passion and vision is birthed in prayer corporately

The most valuable and precious thing I inherited from the previous Pastor was a Monday to Friday morning prayer meeting at 7am with a small group of committed saints who were committed to and believed in prayer.

Every morning, including this morning we gather oh usually between 3-8 of us to pray and seek the heart of the Father and more specifically pray for lost people.

The two prerequisites to successful Christian living are vision and passion, both of which are born in and maintained by prayer.

Leonard Ravenhill Why Revival Tarries

This is the number one reason we have experienced the growth and amazing things we have.

I could tell you over and over again all the specific incredible answers to prayer we have been blessed with.

As a leader you need both passion and vision to be the fuel to effectively lead your church or ministry and prayer births and maintains passion and vision.

When we first arrived at the church the church needed to not just be told to believe God and understand their potential they needed to see God do some really neat things.

So we began to pray specifically.

We began to pray that people would make public commitments to Christ.

We had to be diligent and it didn’t happen right away but before too long people started responding to the gospel.

Baptisms - In out first year of ministry we conducted 10 baptisms that we specifically prayed for.

I mean, we prayed for baptisms and the Lord provided.

We are doing 2 this Sunday coming.

We baptized more people in our 2017-2018 year than we have in at least the past 15 years.

Salvations - We also prayed for salvations and in our first 10 months we saw 5 people make first time commitments to Jesus in the 2017/2018 year.

- Maureen

Paige

Membership - We prayed for new members and the Lord has helped us add 6 new members in the past few months

We prayed for people to help with our worship team and it just so happened there was a Chinese guy in our church who can really play piano.

Paige

We launched our Celebrate recovery ministry and our taking our leaders through the training now

Giving Story - 10,000 cheque

The New Parsonage Win

Why am I telling you all that?

2 reasons, I want to give God praise for how he answers prayer and secondly I want to illustrate something.

When you pray God actually answers.

Prayer really works.

Vision and passion come through prayer.