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Posted on July 7th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
Last week I grabbed a few people whom I think know me pretty well. A friend of mine Shane gave me an idea to try. At the same time I was reading a book “Good to Great” which provided me with the appropriate questions.
The goal was not to get people to say nice things about me but to see if anyone out there was putting the puzzle together more effectively than I. The question “What am I good at” did not appear in the questions. But the question “What am I the Best At” was. The idea was to see if anyone noticed what I am great at and if I am actually working at what I am best at.
Just because I am Great at something does not mean that I am good at it. But what it does mean is that I have the capability of being the best at it. So the things that others have labeled as I am the best at does not mean that I am, but I have the potential to be the best at it. So here are my surprising insights.
Surprising Insights:
1. My Passions seem to be quite transparent. Everyone mentioned that my passions had something to do with me ministering to individuals, making everyone feel special, to help each one grow closer to God.
Funny. I have recently read the book “48 Days to the Work You Love.” I found that music is not a passion of mine. Leading others into worship is not a passion of mine. Being in front of a congregation is not a passion of mine. What is? Helping an individual. After discovering this fundamental passion I find it surprising how everyone else knew it.
2. What Am I Great At? Once again, this is not something that I might be good at, but it might be something that I can be great at. I really was expecting a few to say music just because that is my current position in ministry. Therefore, some just associate me with music. But everyone still said “discipleship” or some type of “education administration.”
Now the secret is out why I put out the survey. Am I working in an area where God has gifted me to be good, or am I working in an area where God has gifted me to be great? Once again I go back to my notes in the book “48 days to the work you love”. Music is not in there. I think that I am good at music but something frustrates me. My favorite time of the week is not choir practice or band practice. You know what it is? Two things, having coffee with individuals in the music ministry and the 15 minute Bible study that I give in every choir practice. THAT’S IT. It’s not leading a congregation when the Holy Spirit immerses the congregation. I do enjoy that but it’s not my favorite. It doesn’t call me out of bed.
I always tried fulfilling my giftedness of ministry and teaching through the worship ministry. I was trying to go from A to B by connecting C. I just never put A to B in a straight line. Yeah, I know that last statement only makes sense to me. I was trying to teach those in the worship ministry instead of seeing my calling as a teacher.
3. So here was the straight forward question “What is my Calling?” The overwhelming answer is discipleship. Some said teaching or education or family ministries. Only a couple said music but I claim that the main reason is that is my current position. Also, I’m not bad at it, but I don’t think I have the ability to be great at it.
It’s no surprise that this survey has turned up the answers. It does surprise me how transparent these answers were to everyone. It seems that the busyness of the music ministry was blinding me of my calling. It is also no surprise that as job offers have come and gone, doing another music ministry has only been a turn off.
Now what do I do? Where do I go from here?
If you would like to fill out the form, do it here.
If you would like to view the results, do it here.
Posted on March 31st, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
I have been studying through the book of Joshua. And I have run across two items that throws up red flags. So lets see what you guys think about all this.
Question #1) When Israel was fighting through the promise land, were the innocent children also killed. Deut. 24:16 prohibits children from beign punished for the sin of the father. However, Joshua 11:20 states that “So they were completely and mercilessly destroyed, as the Lord had commanded Moses.”
Question #2) What does it mean that the Lord “hardened their heart”? Why wouldn’t God soften their heart?
Posted on March 7th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
What is humanism? Let me give an example. My wife has 16 kids in her 1st grade class. Let’s say that 15 of the kids are running around acting crazy. But there is one student that is behaving very well. She is sitting still and doing her work quitely while the rest of the students are going crazy. We would say that my wife have 15 bad students and 1 good student. That would be a humanistic view. Why? Because we assume that the 1 student is good only because she is not doing bad. Therefore we view goodness as being “not bad.” Therefore we teach people to be a good Christian and not smoke, drink, or gamble.
But what if being a good Christian was defined as doing something that was actually good? I believe that we would see a revival in our lives and in our churches if we actually did something good.
Now there are things that is expected of us. Just as the girl who is sitting quitely in my wife’s class. She is not doing anything that is good, she is just not doing anything bad. There are things that we should be doing that is expected of us. But just because we do these things does not mean that we are actually a good Christian. These do not promote the faith but these are things that are expected of us. Some of these things that are neutral by nature would be daily devotionals, prayer, Bible reading, scriptural memorization, and being faithful to those inside their church. These do not make great Christians but makes a good foundation for those who are wanting to be good. For example, the Pharisees would make great church members inside a lot of churches. They are faithful, they could teach, and they had a lot of scripture memorized. But their relationship with Christ was based around rules and regulations.
Humanism makes apathetic people
I see many Christians who attend church, tithe, have their quiet time and be “not bad” Christians. But they stop growing. Why? Because if all they hear is “don’t be like this or that” then they don’t actually do anything good.
When we describe the life of Christ do we focus on His lack of sin or His over-aboundance of good? Here is how God described Jesus:
This should also be our goal. We need to be living a pure life, but Christians cannot be good until they are actually doing something good. We are saved not by works so that we may do that which is good. Now go and do good.
Posted on March 3rd, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
I make the claim that most if not all churches who have a majority of apathetic members have a pastor who is infected with humanism.
My wife is having a hard time as a first grade teacher. Her students are wild and out of control. So the solution to fix the problem first starts with the worldview. Teachers have been spreading the humanistic message that “all people are good, they just will make bad choices at times.” Now for us preachers we can easily spot the humanistic message. The scriptures say that there is none good. No not even one.
If all people are good then they are good at a neutral state. Many people believe that they are good because they are not being bad. “I’m a good person. I don’t drink, cuss, or steal.” “I’m a good Christian. I get up every day and read my Bible and go to church.” Therefore people believe they are good until they do something bad. This is the idea that I am naturally good at a neutral state. This is the humanistic infection.
Good deeds are deemphasized and negative deeds are harped on. Sermons and Bible lessons that harp on sinful actions and not on good deeds are the message of a distracted teacher. Sinful actions must be preached against but just because a person is trying to live a sinless life does not make that person any better of a Christian than those who are living a life of sin.
Want to know why there is so much divorce in churches? Because the messages of marriage are humanistic. We teach men not to lust and women not to flirt. Then we sing an invitation. However the message of Christ is to do good. I am not a good husband until I have done something good. If I say that I am a good husband because I have never cheated on her does not make me a good husband. This is humanistic and will lead to divorce. But a good husband will be proactive in his goodness. He will do nice things to his wife that only benefit her because of his love for her. The divorce comes in because they both hate their marriage. This is not because either one has done anything really wrong, but because neither has done anything right. If you want to have a good marriage then both spouses need to do good things to each other; not to be confused that a good spouse means not to be a bad one.
Being loving and not-being-mean are too different things. Being loving means that you are actively doing loving things. Not-being-mean means that you are not rude to other people but there is no proactive action.
The Golden Rule:”Do unto others as you wish they would do to you.”
The humanistic rule: “Don’t do unto others as you wish they would not do to you.”
“Christ did not come to make immoral people moral, but to make dead people live. (Ravi Zacharias)”
Posted on March 1st, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
I just got through with the book “Tipping Point”. Every pastor needs to pick up a copy. But right now I would like your input on one topic.
The success of Blue’s Clues, which is a children’s show that took over Seseame Street, is on interaction with the kids and repetition. What Blue’s Clues did was to show a new episode every Monday. Then they would repeat the show 4 more times. By Friday the kids where yelling at the TV because they know how to interact. Interacting with the TV made the show a hit. It wasn’t a good story line or even hiring a creative team. The success was when they started repeating the episodes back to back.
What if we did the same thing with our services. I know that many pastors are doing sermon series but what if we could increase the effectiveness of the series by a lot of repetition? At first I would think that adults would become board with the same sermon. But what if we had the main concept then had a different application each week?
I went to the Dave Ramsey live seminar a couple of weeks ago. The whole time I am sitting there hoping he would say things that I read in his books and heard off his radio. Why? Because I invited people who have never heard Dave and I so wanted to make sure they heard key pieces of info that have really helped me. What if the reason why our members do not invite others is because of the lack of consistancy or repetition? It’s like they have no idea how well the service is really going to go, so they won’t invite someone to something they might be embarrassed about?
Solution: What if we had a main idea, then made different applications from week to week throughout a sermon series. I think that most will take that one application per week and try to stretch the sermon to 30 minutes. There is much more I can add but I really would like your input. What do you think? (Oh, a great sermon series that came to mind is the “First” sermon series put on by Gateway Church.
Posted on February 29th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
I attended a music conference this week that was just phenomenal. But in one lesson we were hounded on the fact that God cares more about our character than our craft. God cares more about developing my character than me doing things for Him.But there is only one way that He develops character. This is through trials and tribulations (Rom 5:3-5). So instead of asking God to get me out of the situation, I am to ask God to reveal to me the character that He is either wanting to get rid of or trying to develop.So here is what God is teaching Rachel and I:
What things have you guys learned through your trials?
Posted on February 18th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
I’ve started a Bible study through the book of Joshua. In chapter 2, Josh sends two spies into the town of Jericho (I am a fan of the TV series). The two spies hide in a lady’s house named Rahab who lies to the town officials about hiding the two men. Hebrews 11 praises her for her faith. Although Hebrews does not praise her for the lie, but some could read that her lie in this case was justified and condoned by God.
Rahab’s lie is not the first lie that wasn’t for the good. Exodus 1:19 has a couple of midwives that lied to pharaoh in order to save the lives of innocent baby boys. Was this lie justified? Was is condoned or overlooked by God? Basically, was their lie wrong?
Let me know what you think.
Posted on February 18th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I don’t know where you may be but there is a flu going around that made me want to die. I am glad I didn’t.
Posted on January 30th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
“Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful-Christian community is the final apologetic.” – Francis Schaeffer. What do you guys think?
Posted on January 24th, 2008 by Brian Sparks.
Categories: Blogs.
As Faith Baptist Church continues to grow and transition, the question that we have to keep asking ourselves is “What do we want our members to become?” The question is not what do we want to preach on or sing about. The question is all about what God wants from us.Here is what we came up with.
So now the question is how do we do that? The first problem that we continually run into is that we cannot help people in ALL aspects like we need to because of the religious commitments of tradition. For example, what if we did a sermon series on Finances. We used this as a huge evangelistic event as well. Then during the series we would create several small groups that met in homes to work out the nuts & bolts of their own finances. Here’s the problem, why should we tell people to commit another night out of the week? One answer was to have the home group on Sunday night which would keep them from having to commit another night out of their own busy schedule and allow this to replace the Sunday Night Service. HERECY!!! You can’t do that!Why Not?!?Sunday Night services were not invented until the invention of the light bulb, so why can’t we uninvent the Sunday night service?
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