Leadership Training Fall 2020

Thank you guys for coming out tonight to our leadership training event! Here at East, we have always, and will continue to place a high value on leadership development. We believe it to be an inseparable piece of spiritual discipleship. We want to see the lost become saved. The saved become faithful and the faithful become leaders! Thank you guys for investing some time into your own leadership and to the future of our church!

I want to begin tonight be letting you know about our core leadership values.

If we are going to move together as leaders at East, we have got to know what is important and what we value!

In previous churches, I’ve had numerous people come up to me with a BIG IDEA. It was a plan for an event or for a class, or something that they wanted our church to do or be apart of. Sometimes I loved their idea! But other times, I thought it was a terrible idea.

Sometimes that was because it was just dumb. I.E. We were renovating an old chapel into a youth room at my first church. I was talking to some of the students about ideas and how we could make it appealing. One student suggested we convert the baptistery into a shark tank....

Just a really bad idea! Others were just impossible financially. Or it had no spiritual significance whatsoever.

But sometimes, an idea isn’t a bad idea, it just doesn’t fit with what we are trying to accomplish as a church. Conferences and trainings are a great example. Before Covid, we could advertise a different training or conference every other week if we wanted to! We could start all kinds of studies and start having worship services during the week. We could do all kinds of things that we see other churches doing or whatever we think up on our own. And these aren’t necessarily dumb ideas. They just don’t fit our purpose and our values!

If you will learn these seven leadership values, some of our decision making as a church will make much more sense to you. Our schedule and what we do will be more clear. And if you will not only learn these principles but adopt them as your own values for ministry here, we will all be moving in the same direction as leaders, and it will get fun real fast here at East! AMen?

So, Here at East, we have seven leadership values that are the engines of our decision making and our processes.

1. Clinched Fist - Unity

2. Face to Face/Back to Back - Conflict Resolution

3. Forward Thinking - Growth

4. No one in the dark - Communication

5. Reach out. Reach in - Missional

6. Show up. Stay Late - Work Ethic

7. Who is You? - Multiplication

If you were to ask me, how can I be a good leader here at East? My answer: Grow in each of these areas. I don’t score myself anywhere near 100 in each of these areas; however, when I make a mistake in one of these areas, I know I have apologies to make.

These are the things that we are about as leaders here at East!

Now, we want to give some other leaders an opportunity to talk through in more detail what these areas of ministry are like. And challenge you as leaders in that.

If you are a kids worker, would like to be, or you are a parent who is interested in seeing and hearing about our kids ministry reopen, you can leave now with Mrs. Terry.

If you are going to be leading one of our groups this fall or you would like to know how to become a group leader in the future, you can exit now and leave with the Parvins.

If you are on our security team or are interested in being on it, you can follow Mark out now.

If you are currently or interested in being a greeter, welcome desk worker, parking lot crew, or decision counselor, we will meet right here once they all get out.

Alright, I know we have several different areas of ministry here. Some of you may serve as greeters. You may have worked to welcome desk or been in the parking lot. And others of you are decision counselors. If you are not one those, you may have missed your breakout!

I want to begin with a question...

How would you define the term “hospitality”?

When we think about the word hospitality, we get visions of great hosts and hostesses whose homes we’ve visited through our lives.

How many of you when I talk about a good host or hostess have a person come to mind? I mean they just know how to make you feel welcome in their home! What are some of the things that these people do? If it's someone's first time coming to your house and they knock on the door, do you yell from the bathroom “Come in!” No! A good host is going to greet you at the door right? And they are going to talk to you and tell you where the bathroom is. They may even give you a tour!

There is nothing that puts us at ease when walking into a new place like having someone beside us who knows where everything is!

But hospitality is not just something that we should show when people visit our homes! It’s actually a command God has given us through His Word for every aspect of life! We are to “be hospitable.” Not show hospitality, but BE HOSPITABLE! This means at our workplace, at the grocery store, and everywhere else we may go.

And what better time to be hospitable than when people visit our church! Right? Do you catch this importance?

If you have a Bible, open it to Romans 12. Paul in the book of Romans lays out a beautiful theology of salvation for the first half of the letter. Then his focus shifts from intellectual inflow to more practical outflow. “Because all these statements about God are true, how shall we now live?” Romans 12 is arguable the peak of that practicality.

Paul talks from the beginning of chapter 12 to offer our WHOLE bodies as a living sacrifice before God. And then he dives into an incredible picture of what a local church looks like that is made up of individuals who are doing just that. He compares it to ONE BODY. He says that God has gifted all of us differently and that we should all use our individual gifts in love!

Then he shows us what love looks like.

Read through verses 9-13 at your table and make a list of the ways Paul commands us to show love.

9Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good. 10Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord. 12Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer. 13Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality.

Paul goes into much more detail after this but for sake of our convo, let’s stop here. PURSUE HOSPITALITY. You must remember here that Paul is not just speaking to those with a particular gifting towards this. He is saying in this chapter, “Yes, there are different giftings, but each should be expressed in love. And here is what I mean by love: (read back through each command). We have every reason to believe that Paul is speaking to the whole church in Rome. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, he is speaking to the whole of Lindsay Lane East today!

Discussion of hospitality is littered throughout the New Testament. Often times it is about the relationship between believers, but in other places it is in regards to those outside the church.

This leads to the question “Are we welcoming or hospitable as a church?” Do people outside our church feel welcome or only those inside?

What we see in the book of Acts and the Epistles is a group of people called to love not only one another but those who are not yet part of the church. People are the mission! If we don't go to great lengths to love people as they are, can we really say we are being missional as a church?

Before we dive into some research in a book I have here, how would you rate an average Sunday here at East in being welcoming to regulars and to guests? (1-10)

What happens to us is that we get really comfortable with the atmosphere of a church. For me, I have spent over 1700 Sundays in a church. I can go in any traditional type church and find my way around pretty easily. I know what to look for. I know how the service will probably flow. I know when we will stand and sit. I know a lot about church life.

But for many of our guests, this is not the case. We have people visit our church who have very little experience in a church. In fact, we have some visit as skeptics. They have been dragged here by a friend or family member. Or they want to be able to say that they tried church and it didn't help them. These people come in looking for issues in the church. They want you to ignore them. They want the message to be offensive. They want everything to go wrong so they will have fuel for their fire against God.

Of course we can't reach everyone. Some people just don't want God. They don't want to be cared for. But I want to do everything I can to help them connect with God at East.

When I was in student ministry, there was a guest who came one Wednesday night. Her friend told me she wanted to talk to me. So I went to her and began sharing Jesus. I spent nearly an hour showing her the love of Christ in every way I possibly knew how. I showed her tons of scripture. I shared examples from my own life. I talked about the testimonies of others. I used hypothetical scenarios. I literally worked up a sweat sharing Jesus. By the end, I said, “Is following Jesus something you would like to begin doing today?” She looked down, then back up at me. Then she said, “ No, I don't think so.” Are you kidding me? Did you hear that masterful job I just did with the Gospel? At that point, I gave her my number and told her if she ever got ready to, she could call me or talk with one of her friends.

For this girl, I did everything I could, she simply rejected my message. And I can't change that. I couldn’t change her heart (as bad as I wanted to).

In the same way, we can’t make everyone love our church and fall in love with Jesus their first Sunday here. All we can do is our dead-level best to remove all the barriers that might hinder their encounter with God. We must begin thinking and talking about hospitality and striving to show it. Even so, some will reject us and the Gospel, but we won't be caught being lazy or unorganized in our efforts!

Danny Franks says, (quote from 86).

I appreciate their efforts in this. In fact, many homosexuals in and around Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina have found refuge at their church and have discovered the love of Christ and been changed. Many have accepted Christ there who felt hated by every other church around.

A couple years ago, I ran into a girl I went to school with who is a lesbian at a wedding with her girlfriend. Kelly and I were really good friends with her in school. At the wedding, it was sadly obvious that many of the Christians were ignoring her and staying away from her. So what did Kelly and I do? We sought her out. We met her girlfriend and talked about old times in high school. Asked some things about them. Trying to be hospitable, right?

Then God did something cool. Guess where she lives? Raleigh, NC! So Kelly seamlessly leads into a conversation about my mancrush JD Greear who is the pastor at the Summit Church. We told them that if they were looking for a church around them, Summit would be an awesome one.

Honestly, I don't know if they would ever go, but if they would, I know they would find a church who loved them despite their sin. They would find a refuge from a hostile world. And most importantly, they would hear the Gospel, plainly, clearly, and lovingly!

Isn’t this what the church is supposed to be? A group of people who love others unconditionally and seek to make disciples of those who are not yet saved?

That’s why we have to start having some of these conversations!

Back to the book…

Some of you have spent a lot more than 1700 Sundays in church. And for many of you, you have spent many Sundays in this church: parking in the same spot, walking in the same door, talking to the same people, sitting in the same seat, etc. We have forgotten what it is like to be a guest!

When is the last time you visited a church and what do you remember about it?

If we are going to be truly hospitable to guests, we have to think about a lot of the things that we don’t even notice any more. When we love our church, we can be a little bias and overlook our faults. Are you willing to admit that maybe there is work to be done? Will you commit to look at our church through a new light with me through this study? Will you honestly consider doing whatever necessary as a church and as individuals to make our church a more welcoming place?

These are important questions! You may still be thinking, “Well, what kind of stuff are you talking about?”

In the book, based on a study that Lifeway did, they discovered 10 of the top reasons why people gave for returning to a church.

1. Someone asked the guest to sit with her.

2. People introduced themselves to the guest.

3. There was clear signage.

4. There was a clearly marked welcome center.

5. The kids loved the children’s area.

6. The children’s area was secure and sanitary.

7. Guest parking was clearly visible.

8. The church did not have a stand-and-greet time.

9. The members were not pushy.

10.The guest card was simple to complete.

Which of these is most likely to be said of our church? Which is least likely to be said?

If Christians are a family, then this facility on Sunday mornings is our home. And we CAN humbly model biblical hospitality in such a way that those who are hostile to the Gospel let their guards down and hear our message with fresh ears, those expecting to find hypocritical stuck ups are moved by the love we show, and ultimately, those who are far from God are brought near right here on this property!

Can you get behind that vision? Amen! Let's do it together!