Continued from page 1
I am amazed at how our best church families have no clue as to how to have conversations at home about spiritual subjects. Churches are so busy getting people involved at church that they've neglected this fundamental agenda of spiritual formation. The typical church family leaves spiritual stuff to what happens at church, thereby delegating spiritual formation to institution. And institution encourages it!
What if youth ministers spent as much time with parents as they did with their children? This would be a shift for most church expectations of staff. We typically hire children's and youth ministers to run programs for children and young people. In fact, this approach by church may do more to decimate home as a spiritual center than anything coming into home on television or Internet.
As a youth, I grew up in surfing culture. As a surfer, I never planned a single wave, but I did prepare to ride waves when they came. God is making waves all around North American church. Some churches are going to get to ride them. These are churches that are prepared to get in on what God is up to."
Typical approaches to future involve prediction and planning. The better and biblical approach to future involves prayer and preparation. The Apostles sitting in Temple on day of Pentecost were not engaged in a strategic planning retreat to plan birth of church and early stages of Christian movement. Not in their wildest dreams would they have scripted three thousand converts on Day One nor would they have predicted leap of Spirit to Samaritans or to Gentiles? Apparently not, based on their responses to both developments. Would they have recruited rising star of Judaism to become ultimate leader of movement? Hardly. God does planning; we do preparing. He does not say, “I am waiting for you to develop plans I can bless."
Spiritual preparation has goal of getting God's people in partnership with him in his redemptive mission in world. The five elements of a spiritually prepared architecture are vision, values, results, strengths, and learning. The question we need to begin asking is, how do we cultivate vision? Vision is discovered, not invented. Jesus Christ said, ”I will build my Church”. He is one with vision for our lives and church. It is our job to discover what he has in mind, not to invent something he can get excited about.
I learned following lesson early in life and it has eased my heart tremendously. God is always at work in every situation before I show up. As reality of this fact sunk in, I realized that my job was not to analyze situation really well and then to figure out a way to make something happen but rather to see what God is already doing and ask if I had a part to play.
We need to listen to people in our church, we need to look at our town or neighborhood and we need to talk with our leaders. But as we do that we must be focused on question: What is God already doing here? Jesus models this kind of approach in John 5:19 when He says, "I do nothing on my own initiative. I only do what I see Father doing. Further, role of a leader is to help his people ask question: What do we see God doing here? This is starting point for visioning process.
Maurice Goulet is Author of Lord Of Darkness ~ Lord Of Light. (Unfolding The Signs Of The Times And The Hope Of A New World) Now available Online at www.CDBN.com.
Maurice Goulet is an Ordained Minister and the founder of The Chosen Path Ministries. He Teaches and writes an online newsletter on the principles of building a successful home fellowship. He is also the Author of Lord Of Darkness ~ Lord Of Light.(Unfolding The Signs Of The Times And The Hope Of A New World) Now available Online at www.CDBN.com.