Ok so I work with young adults & college students. It is a combination of a great joy & a great challenge.
My question for everyone (no matter how old you are) is what will be the greatest challenge of the church over the next decade?
What issues will this generation need to conquer & what will be its successes & failures?
I could throw out some ideas but I’m interested to hear what you think. If you were me what challenges would you be preparing your next generation leaders to face?
CNN has been doing a lot of reporting of online churches.
Watch this 2 minute video & discuss what are your thoughts of online churches?
Biblical / Not biblical ?
Healthy / unhealthy?
Is this a creative way to reach the lost or another way for people to separate further from the church, the body of Christ & real biblical community?
I have been re-evaluating my job description.
Each week I am surrounded by all of these young people who are so anxious to make their mark on the world. Young people who all want to be somebody, want to make something of their lives and want to race into the future before it arrives. So our team talks a lot about how to help our young men & woman make God’s mark in the world & not their own. We talk about spiritual leadership in the same way that Henry Blackaby does and we ask, “how do we move people from their agenda to Gods agenda?”
So in our ministry we have these deeply transformed disciples who have encountered the gospel in such a way that everything has changed for them & they want to chase these crazy dreams. So they come to us and they say, “what if I were to………………..?” Then God gives me one of my favorite moments as a pastor, the moment where I get to cultivate imagination. Where I get the opportunity to dream big dreams & ask tough questions & open up small doors. So in our ministry right now we have all of these dreamers, dreaming God sized dreams and instead of me inviting them to join me in building the church, they are inviting me to join them in building their God sized dreams.
There is so much more to this but let me ask some simple questions:
What if instead of thinking how our leaders can help us build our ministries, we begin to ask, how can I help you cultivate your dreams?
What would it look like if pastors were to see our role more as cultivators of imagination?
How would our churches look different?
Just to get you talking!
What do you think of Christian organizations making lists of the most influential churches/pastors?
At Catalyst Rob Bell discussed this & said something like, “we need to put down the crack pipe.” “Does the bible not teach us that the last will be first?” “If your name is on a list like this your goal should be to get off of those lists.” This of course is the Ben paraphrase!
Seems strange to me to rank Christians & churches. Now I ask this question knowing that my name was on a list like this a few years back & although it made my mom proud it simply made me uncomfortable!
By the way Rob’s name was on the list also, so was his church & many of his staff members names.
Discussion please? I’m interested to hear your thoughts!