Prayer Slows Down Time

I have noticed this last week that the more I pray, the more time I seem to have. This seems really backwards at first. I would think that the more time I set aside, the less time I would have for the rest of the things in life. When I spend more time with God, the other things in life seem less important and many things simply fall off of my agenda. Life becomes more clear and less cluttered. If you are feeling overwhelmed, busy and frazzled with life, my suggestion for you is to try and set aside time for prayer. This will be really hard at first, but make it a priority (you probably won't get everything done anyway!). Try this for a week or two and see what happens.

Becoming a Place of Prayer

At the end of 2008 I felt called to take our congregation on a journey to becoming a place of prayer.  First of all that means that we will dedicate 2009 to learning about prayer and practicing prayer.  My goal is to update this blog weekly about what we are learning and experiencing.

We have been at this for about 2 weeks now and I have already noticed 2 things. First is that prayer is simple yet complicated.  Second is that it is very easy and tempting to get distracted from a focus on prayer.

Prayer seems simple at first - just taking to God.  But there are so many ways to talk to Him.   As I have started to look at prayer in the Bible, it is so much more than just asking for things.  There is praise, thanksgiving and listening.  And so many of the prayers in the Bible are responses to what God has told someone or to what He has already done in their lives.  It seems as though the more we pray the more we feel we need to pray and the more things we find to pray about.  The prayer well is an infinitely deep one.

The commitment to pray more is like most resolutions, easy to make and hard to keep.  We get busy with day to day concerns and pretty soon it has been several day since we have talked to God.  As a church we get distracted by programs that need to be run, people who need care, services and events that need to be planned, leaders need to be trained, budgets made and kept, money raised and bills paid.  Pretty soon we become an institution or just another non-profit organization.  Prayer becomes an afterthought if anything at all.  I found myself this week looking down that road and had to consciously decide to continue to make prayer my #1 priority and focus even in the midst of all the other stuff that needs to be done.

Does Church Size Really Matter?

Every time I meet another pastor one of the first questions they ask is - How big is your church? May times when I meet a lay person and tell them I am a pastor I get the same question. Why we are so focused on size? Does having more people really make your church better at loving people or better at making disciples?

I am not sure that size really matters when it come to churches. I know of both large and small churches that are extremely effective at ministering to people, I also know both large and small churches that are ingrown, inward focused and ineffective. Obviously, churches that are effective will eventually grow numerically and churches that are large were probably effective at some point in their history, but the current number of attendees is a poor measure of effectiveness.

Is our main goal for people attendance or life change? When our goal is attendance we will try to do anything it takes to get people to attend our church service, event etc. When our goal is life change we will focus on the people who are attending and how to get them to let God change the way they think, feel and act toward Him and others.

We need to stop believing the lie that attendance = lifechange.

Many people have attended church for many years and yet have experienced very little if any real change in their lives, in fact they get very upset if you even suggest that something should be changed.

In my experience, the most effective and lasting life change actually occurs when someone is involved in a group of 12 or less people that is focused on the issues of the way we think, feel and act towards God and others. A small, focused group can provide a safe place for us to be transparent and open, it can provide a level of accountability. Most of us need a little bit of help when it comes to change in our lives. A small group is infinitely more effective at providing that help than is a very large group.

Jesus commanded us to make disciples (change people's lives). Why do we worry about attendance when a smaller group is actually more effective at accomplishing our prime directive.

A better question is - How many people do you have that are involved in an intimate small community of people who are focused on their relationships with God, each other and those outside the group? I wonder how many of us as pastors even know the answer to that question.

Let Us Love One Another

What is love? There are many answers to that question. I would like to share my answer here. You don't have to agree with me, this is just my opinion. I believe real true love has two components, acceptance and truth.
If we truly love someone we will accept them without condition. This is what I mean:

1. We will value them as a person regardless of their outward appearance, behavior, ideology, belief system, morals, attitude etc. They are of value because they are a human being whom God has created and given life.
2. We will respect them. We will allow them to make their own decisions. We will allow them to have their own perspective.
3. We will base our behavior towards them upon the above rather than upon how they treat us. We will strive to treat them better that ourselves.

Many will stop here when it comes to love, but there is a second, equally important, component to real true love which is truth.

If we truly love someone we will be honest with them. This means that we tell them how we feel - even if it is not positive. Though we accept them with their shortcomings, we also lovingly hold them accountable. Because my wife loves me, she will tell me when I have a spot on the back of my pants before I go out the door in the morning. And because she accepts me even though I have a spot on my pants, I can receive this criticism without taking it personally and getting angry.

We must practice speaking the truth in love. My wife could say, "how could you be so stupid as to put on a pair of pants with a spot in the back?" or she could say, "Dear, did you know there is a spot on the back of your pants?" Both statements might be true. However, the first is done with fighting words which attack my intelligence and imply that I am inferior. The second statement merely tells me the truth and allows me to make the decision regarding the action to be taken about it.

With pratice and a lot of help from the Holy Spirit, we can learn to love each other with acceptance and truth. The kind of love that Jesus has for each of us.