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In the past 3-4 days I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about this simple thought… what is evangelism? The context of that seems to be that while our team was in Northern Ireland some folks have a hard time describing what we did there as “primarily evangelism.”

Here’s why I think it is evangelism… But first I have to challenge major assumptions about it.

Evangelism is a process and not an event
The very word evangelism means the process of evangelizing. To share the gospel with someone shouldn’t be just a one time occurrence and it shouldn’t result in anyone inviting you to church… It should be a process of inviting lost people to come to Jesus. Jesus and church are two different things!

I like to challenge people with thinking about evangelism as a process where you are helping lost people find out about and meet with Jesus. He is God! He can overcome any obstacle… But He also allows Christians to enter into the process by having us be “wall builders or wall destroyers.”

Evangelism is about introducing people to Jesus, not defending Christian beliefs
A lot of people think that because they get into debates about stuff… That they are sharing their faith. Nope, that’s an art called apologetics. Evangelism is about Jesus, not Christian politics or even morality discussions. I can lead someone to Christ who is a practicing homosexual who lives with his partner, votes Democrat, has a NOW sticker, and gives money to PETA. Don’t like that thought? Look at what Jesus told the Pharisee’s when they didn’t like him hanging out with tax collectors!

Evangelism is a spiritual gift… And a skill you can learn
Too many people say “I don’t have the spiritual gift of evangelism so I don’t need to share my faith.” Maybe that sounds good to you… But it is unbiblical. Each believer is given the same charge to make disciples. It doesn’t have an out clause if you’ve scored low on evangelism in a spiritual gift profile or if you aren’t comfortable.

Evangelism is too hard to do
So is seeing lost people suffer. I like to go back to an old movie called Medicine Man. In the jungles of the Amazon Sean Connory’s character stumbles across a drug that kills cancerous tumors in mice. But his drug company rep is worried about the profits and the patent… She tries to stop him from telling the world about his discovery too soon and he yells at her, “If you knew the cure for cancer, wouldn’t you want to tell the world!” It’s a powerful question for believers. If you know Christ, you know the cure for something for more important that cancer. You know the cure for sin… Something that separates people from a Holy God. Don’t you see the need to tell lost people how they can know God?

Evangelism is just about getting people to heaven
True, those who know Christ go to heaven and those who don’t know him, the Bible teaches, they are separated from God and punished in hell.

But evangelism is more than just about the afterlife! It’s about living a life for Jesus here and now. A life free from the entrapments of sin and guilt. To be forgiven is to be truly set free to live! A lot of people think they are living great lives but they are dead in their sins… Knowing Christ will help people live a more abundant and fulfilling life now. [Not monitarily, bigger than simple money!]

As Kristen and I went to sleep last night, our thoughts were on the people of New Orleans as the massive hurricane was set to hit them “dead, solid, and perfect.”

It didn’t really hit me that this storm was so massive until I saw a comparison with 2004’s hurricane Charlie. Katrina is 5 times larger than Charlie. Charlie was something like 40 miles wide when it slammed into the Ft. Myers area… it was about 400 miles wide when it hit low lying Louisiana.

I just hope people heeded the warnings and got out of the way of this monster.

Today is the day! About 4-5 months ago I was sitting in Dave Rahn’s Equipping Strategies class at Huntington when I realized that what I was experiencing there, we must experience at Romeo.

It wasn’t a fancy idea. It was life touching life stuff. I knew that at my church we had teachers who were passionate about teaching our children and adults, but who lacked drive and skills. I knew we had teachers who were burnt out and needed a break but didn’t know where it would come from, and I knew we had a church that was growing but in danger of outgrowing it’s Christian Education. As I sat in that classroom I decided I wanted to be a part of a massive turnaround that changed our church from an abusing teachers model to an equipping teachers model. In order to do that we had to turn a corner… We had to start pouring ourselves into teachers instead of using them until they quit. We needed to train more than teach.

So that is today! Beginning in just a couple of hours, a gaggle of teachers will be coming to Romeo for a morning of mini-training seminars. I’ve heard grumbling, I’ve heard people trying to get out of it… But I keep telling folks the same thing…”It’s not what you think it will be, it is the start of something that will hopefully transform our church to where we need to go.”

It’s been a lot of work to see this from that classroom until today. The bottom line is that I think it is worth it. I hope this is the beginning of a turnaround at Romeo. Sure, we’ve grown… But not by much. It’s my “great scheme” hope that trying to become an equipping church will help the people really believe that Romeo can be bigger than they are. We see God doing something here and we want to be a part of it… It’s started all over in tiny pockets and we want to see it spread. Training teachers to train others is a big part of it!

With all this angst and all the busyness going around with the start of Fall stuff and all my other non-StuMin projects… sometimes I need a reminder that I am a youth dude. Case in point, Wednesday night. I asked a few of my “core students” to plan a couple of fun games. So they came up with two games that made this “old guy” gag.

The sick part about this? The kids absolutely loved it. No sooner did I almost throw up than did a middle schooler tell me, “I wish I had volunteered, that looks fun!”

I am not a gross out game specialist. When I worked with Allied Force back in the day we used to love to make kids ralph. It was cool to get a kick to puke. There was nothing quite as fun as seeing some kid toss red atomic fireball mess all over the stage. In fact, the grosser it was the more students seemed to like it.

I describe myself as “post-gross out games.” In general I’m not into it. Yet at the same time I have to deal with the reality that this is fun to the students I am trying to reach.

[Insert ever present debate about entertainment vs. ministry.] All of this to say that I don’t think LF will ever become a group that does tons and tons of gross stuff. Occasionally? Sure, why not? But I firmly believe in the simple principle that “You keep a student with what brought them there.” Until it proves itself wrong, I am going to stick with primarily basing LF around the Bible, worship, and togetherness. I want that to bring our students because I think that is something worth staying for.

It turns out that what I wrote back a few days ago has really grown into quite a discussion. It’s been a very interesting this… Having my private and incomplete thoughts copied into a public debate… But it has also been good. I have been learning a lot and really understanding what I wrote and have been thinking about for quite some time.

Follow the discussion on the YS Clone Forums topic: Saw this blog entry on satifified with ok?

Ugh
There is trouble brewing in River City. It feels like the honeymoon is ending for PB and there appear to be some conflicts coming out of the woodwork. Since he’s been on staff for the last 6 months he’s been able to bully people and get away with it because “he’s the new pastor.” Well… That had to end sooner or later!

At any rate, I feel stuck on one that is going on right now. A couple has become a pain in the butt, not to be too frank, and they are going to have to be dealt with on eggshells. I love this couple and I think it can be resolved… But I also this resulting in them getting more worked up and starting a fight.

How to put out a fire… Two methods
I’m not an expert on putting out fires, but I have learned there are two ways to handle it in the church that I like to use.

1. Mount a full on offensive against it. This means calling on all the means of your power in the church and confronting the parties head on. This would be the fire equivalent of putting a house fire out with a helicopters bucket! It’s a tour de force.
2. Put some parameters on them and let the fire burn itself out. Essentially, this just means that you, as a leader, let it go. You let the person know you see why they are upset. You agree to disagree and ask them not to spread gossip, and you let them be. This provides enough space in the relationship for the fire to burn itself out and both parties get over it.

To me, there is wisdom in using option 2 more often than option 1. Option 1 is so extreme and so aggressive that it sends a message to everyone in the church… And that’s not a message I am comfortable with. My opinion is that when there is conflict between two people both parties bear some responsibility for causing the conflict so option two works better most of the time. But option 2 also takes more patience!

I am really worried that this thing could blow up big time…. Double ugh!

You know, this has been on my mind for quite a while.

With Kristen and I settling down here in Romeo, I am constantly stuck with the thought… “Couldn’t I do better in ministry? Isn’t there some place other than here that is bigger, better, or more suited to my talents and what I really think I can do?” Am I settling for mediocre when I could have more?

I could sum it all up with this argument?

Am I happy here because I know this is where God wants me or am I happy here because I’ve decided this is where God wants me? How the heck am I supposed to discern between these two things?

I suppose some of this comes from my egotistical side. I look at co-workers in youth ministry who are less experienced and less educated than I am that are working for bigger, better, and growing like crazy churches. And I am here at a church that is slow growing… And in the process I’ve had to give up so much of what I love about ministry to take on roles that if I worked somewhere bigger or better I would never have to mess with. [Video editing, web development, oversee Christian Ed, Missions, Bonfire, on and on…]

I know from my training in counseling that this is a response a lot like a mid-life crisis… “Could I have made better decisions to get me further ahead in life?” I’m not nearly old enough to worry about this but I do!

Hold on, stop the bus!
This is where the conversation needs to stop. See, here’s the cool part. Jesus never promised any of us a “big church” or a showcase ministry. He simply called to his disciples, “Stop what you are doing, follow me.” Sure, some of those disciples ended their lives with thousands of followers… But some of them died alone, or nearly alone. Who started to lie to pastors that bigger is better or that we should even be comparing one church to another? This is an American invention… In a lot of ways… It is an American lie. [Yes, Satan is alive and working in the hearts and minds of America!] A church shouldn’t be judged by it’s size, it should be judged in its effectiveness. Is it an equipping church? Is it a church that teaches people the Bible? Is it a church that seeks to honor God with what the Lord has given it? Is it a church that thinks of others needs?

Why am I sitting here, having another internal debate about “bigger or better” when I should be resting in knowing that I am fortunate to work in a church that loves me and my family, that cares for us, that cares for others, that is equipping people, that gives away tons of money to missions, that teaches God’s Word, on and on… I am having this debate because I too get sucked into the lie all the time.

At the end of the day…
Right now, I know a few folks who are headed for greener pastures. In my world, this means that they have found a place to work in ministry that is Bigger or Better in their eyes than the one they are currently at. I wonder, how many skilled and trained youth workers out there are willing to take off their “big ministry” boots and invest their lives in a church that is “smaller and busted?”

Why is it that the most talented people only want to work at the churches that are already good? Why don’t those people chose to help small, struggling churches get healthy? Are they too good for that? Are their talents wasted? Is it “not worth their time?” Why aren’t Doug Fields, Bo Boshers, and all the other “big dogs” leaving their mega-churches to help other hurting churches?

How come so many youth workers look up to Mike Yacanelli, but when it comes down to it… They don’t have the balls to live like him? They read his books, they chuckled at his joke “I am the pastor of the slowest growing church in America” but they wouldn’t ever put themselves, their talents, their families, or their reputation in that situation. Let’s face it, a lot of youth workers out there HAVE EGOS THE SIZE OF THEIR YOUTH GROUPS. They are snobs who wouldn’t ever want to work with broken and busted churches. They hear what church I work at and head for the hills because we are too small, too broken, and can’t offer them anything of value. So the reality is, that they are in ministry for themselves and not for others. They have been trained and are getting experienced so that they can have easier jobs with more stuff and less problems. The concept of “others first” or “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” is foreign to them. A lot of the “big guys” I know have bought into and perpetrate the lie “bigger is better.”

That’s why I am in Romeo. I think my talents are best suited here… small, broken, but getting better. When I play the franchise mode of a video game like Madden NFL 2005… I always take a busted team and make them better. When I get them to the Super Bowl… I start with a new team… Take a broken team and make them better. See, it doesn’t take much skill or talent to take a winner and turn them into a Super Bowl winner.

I wonder how many people in ministry out there have the guts to do that with their own lives?

Is it worth a lifetime to turn a loser into a winner? I guess I’ll let you know at the end of the day.

So today I am off on another one of my marathons.

• Early morning I’ll be @ church setting up the visual presentation part of church and making sure lots of photos are getting snapped for the web and other stuff upcoming.
• Sunday school
• Signing people up between services to drive shuttles during the Peach Festival
• Church… get to relax except that I’ll be running the PC’s and overseeing the rest of it.
• After church… go to the Armada Fair to see our POPS group perform. [Of course, the kids will want to stay and be a part of everything else.]
• Dash back home so the kids can take naps…
• Then I can finalize things for tonights bonfire.

I’ll get home tonight around 10:00 PM and absolutely crash. This is the biggest reason I moved my day off from Friday to Monday. After the “day of rest” I need a day of rest.

This afternoon I broke down and moved the family computer. This is something I’ve needed to do since I got back from Smiletown but I was hoping would just go away.

Last week we had the Comcast guy come out and figure out what was causing our major connectivity headache… He said it had to do with the Comcast upgrade and the fact that the connection I had to the cable in the basement was too far from the box. Ugh!

So I started lugging all of my crap all upstair to the bedroom. So, the whole family network is all up and running. Even though it was a pain in the ass, I am glad I did it.

In other news: I’ve been downloading some video clips for church from MediaShout. I am really pleased with their selection of high quality videos suitable for what we are doing in church. One of the jobs I’ve been given [insert Jeremy’s groan that I need a new ministry position!] is that I had to come up with a contemplative video each week. Half of them will be about our missionaries [another new job responsibility!] and the other half will be contemplative. Rather than me creating all of these videos… I’ve decided to cheat and buy some of them. This will save me a few hours each week. I’ve also been signing up for the different companies freebies.

Megan and Paul playing nice.

Paul enjoying the fireworks after the game

Any chance these two are related. It’s Paul closest to the camera and his cousin Zach on the far side.

Kristen wasn’t as excited as everyone else. Guess baseball isn’t her cup of tea.

Megan and Allison spent most of the night checking things out in their binoculars. Megan spent the entire night on Aunt Gwen’s lap.