When Prayer Doesn’t Work.

We posted our series on prayer “The Most Powerful Thing You Can Do!” online. Last week we talked about what happens when our prayers don’t work. The core of the sermon was 5 questions we need to ask when our prayers aren’t answered.

1. Is there sin in my life?

2. Am I the answer?

3. Is this about God’s perspective or ours?

4. Is the pain/hurt/difficult time really a part of the answer?

5. Is there a spiritual battle going on I am unaware of?

God definitely worked on me through preparing and giving the talk. Wrapping up this Sunday with April rocking out to “Keys to Prayer.” She’s gonna knock it out of the park!

Stoked!

Over the last month or so I have become incredibly stoked about a couple of our worship leaders who I totally sense are going to do some great things in their lives for God. Steve and Shannon are two people who are bent not only on making worship rock, but who will do whatever it takes to help people far from God meet him. They aren’t afraid to fail and they aren’t afraid to look stupid. Okay maybe they are, but they won’t let it stop them. Rather they are going to do what they can for God and seem to have the attitude of whatever I do, I don’t want to look back and say, “I wish I would have….” God loves to use people like that.

This rocked my world today.

I’m just started going through Revelation a couple days ago in my own personal study.

According to early church fathers, John was doing ministry at the church in Ephesus before Rome sent him as a political prisoner to the island Patmos (where he received the “Revelation”). The first letter to the 7 churches is addressed to Ephesus. It says while they have fought the battles theologically (compared with Pergamum who didn’t do so hot in that area),  they have forgotten their first love. For the apostle who was all about love, I find it interesting, the first letter is directed to what is thought to be “his church.” What Jesus tells him is to go back to doing the deeds they did at first. The solution is “deeds.” Not talking about it, but doing. The result is, “the tree of life.” Just thought it was cool and made me stop and think.

READ THIS!!!

If you are a church planter or pastor, Perry Noble put up a great article “Some Random Stuff” on his blog. It’s basically a collection of some of his top posts and wherever you are in church planting from just praying about it to years in, check this out!!!! good stuff.

prayer is.

Prayer is: Aligning our perspective with God’s to partner with Him in ________.

The “blank” might be our family, our purpose, our job, our friend’s cancer, our brother’s addiction, our sister’s happiness, our church’s future, our marriage, our parent’s health, our kid’s school, etc.

A Reoccurring Thought

I came across this phrase sometime last spring while checking out a McManus book and it pops in my head every now and then:

God wants to take you from the life you’ve known, to the life you’ve never imagined.

Good stuff.

3 key questions to take into a 1 on 1 staff meeting.

When I was in seminary I wondered what a good meeting with a staff person looked like. Through working in mega churches to a small country church to church planting here are a few key ingredients I take into a meeting with me which  I have found to be essential to making a meeting rock:

What is the 1 crucial question I want answered?

Where are they personally in terms of their stress level, spiritual level, and energy level? This is more gauging it from the overall discussion than anything.

What do they need from you?

Here is an example from tonight’s meeting with Steve, our worship director. I should start out with saying that I am incredibly proud of what Steve and his team have accomplished. He has been a perfect fit for our church especially in terms of creativity and energy as well as surrounded himself with a great group of musicians.

We started with a quick run through of the new series we are starting on prayer: The Most Important Thing You Can Do! Then it was all about the questions:

How do you think worship is going? (What’s going well? What isn’t?). - this was the main question I wanted answered. Because it is from this which we will set upcoming goals. We also went though a quick discussion of each band member, where they are, etc.

What does your apprentice need to work on? – the second key question I wanted answered. Totally excited about this weekend to see how she leads by herself. We’re just going to throw her in and have her lead because in 2 weeks, she’s leading by herself. Sink or swim. She can totally do it though. She’s a rockstar.

What are you doing to grow your specific area as you reach the unchurched? if we don’t continue to reach outside ourselves we’re not really doing the mission.

My Take: Here’s what I see (Good & Bad): I let him know what I see. Ex. our intros and staccato parts are better as the band is playing as a band – listening to each other, not just to themselves, but still need a bit of work to create that punch in certain parts. His apprentice has a phenomenal voice, but her stage presence needs to reflect what she is singing. ie. if you sing about how awesome God is, but have a slightly freaked out look on your face because you are concentrating so much on making sound good, there is a contrast you are projecting. And I know she can sing and have awesome stage presence because I have seen her do it!

What do you see that is/isn’t going well overall with the entire church? His answer: overall we are doing well, its just continuing to bring in fresh faces which is the challenging aspect since Uptown isn’t really church friendly, or tolerant. That is where I need to step it up even more as the pastor and lead by example.

Where can I improve? - I really want to know this. In leadership, in preaching, in anyway possible. His answer: the talks are great and the content is always engaging and good. He didn’t mention anything negative which I don’t really like because I know I always have stuff to work on. What he did say later: we should spend more time hanging out. Hence, I need to make myself more available. Which is absolutely true.

We finished up with game planning for our Spring Series: Dirty Little Secrets of The Church and talking about Christmas. - this was twofold. To bring him into the conversation of our Spring kickoff series which he hadn’t been apart of because of a change in full staff meeting times and he couldn’t attend. Secondly to get ideas of Christmas kicking around and thought about.

C3 Conference

The C3 Conference is coming in February. Haven’t been there in 2 years. Totally hope to make it down with some of our team this year. If you’ve never been, it is PHENOMENAL!!! It’s by far and away the best of the church conferences I’ve been to.

Marketing That Captures

One of things I love about urban church planting is the challenge. It demands an entirely different way than the suburbs. Over the last couple weeks in our staff meetings we’ve wrestled with the question on how to approach a demographic that is saturated with marketing. In other words: what works and gets attention in the suburbs seems cheesy and see-through in Uptown. Therefore, how do we capture the attention, hearts, and minds of an urban culture that has no use for church whatsoever. When their thoughts of Christ is a church of their youth that was boring and judgmental, how do we bring them to see a revolutionary hero that died for them so they could be free and know Him forever? Our team has been working hard and has some great stuff planned. These next couple of months are going to be very cool…

Spaces

Reading Luke 10:38 tonight. The account of Mary sitting listening to Jesus while her sister Martha is working.

1. What Martha is doing (work) is good.

2. What Mary is doing (taking a space in her schedule to hear from Jesus) is better.

Far too often in our lives, including ministry, we tend to follow Martha’s example. Working at the office, then at home. We don’t even need laptops now with the ability to check and respond to work emails from our phones. Noise dominates most of our lives.

Jesus’ words to Martha cut to the facts: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things.” I constantly have on my mind this week’s sermon, planning for the upcoming series, administrative stuff that needs to get done even if I am not the one responsible for it still enters my head, meetings, creative elements, even remembering to pray for people. And it’s all good stuff, it’s all a part of people coming to meet Christ or growing in their knowledge of Him, but often I find I begin to drift toward the “so many things,” that I have to force myself to remember “but one thing is necessary.” And that of course is that part that Mary chose. The spaces where I shut up  and God speaks. The stillness and eagerness to hear from the Creator.