Tag Archive for: god’s call

Your People are an Army!

Your people, those who attend your church, represent an incredible Kingdom army. Sadly, however, most of the army remains in basic training and are never released to fight in the battle. They want to serve, but church soldiers often do not understand how they are to serve.

2 Corinthians 10:4 states: “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” One of the strongholds that often keep people immobilized, is a lack of clarity regarding God’s purpose for their life. In fact, the #1 question on the heart and mind of every person is, “Why am I here…why did God make me like this?” My staff and I live to help people discover the answer to that vital question. God doesn’t want to keep us in the dark about our life purpose? In fact, I believe that our unique design is an intentional creation of God, perfectly suited for the “good works God has prepared for us” (Ephesians 2:10). So if we want to know what kind of good works we are to accomplish, a significant first-step to discovering this answer is found in the talents, skills, and abilities that come naturally to us. God will never ask us to serve him in a way that is contrary to his design for your life.

I learned that lesson the hard way many years ago when God called me to plant my first church. From previous experiences, I discovered that the Lord designed me to be a driven visionary with strong strategic planning abilities. As such, I can cast a noble vision for people, and help them plug-in. The new church was going great. We were rapidly growing in size. We also were blessed to have many adults come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. However, all of our momenta was stalled in one day due to the destructive behavior one person. Unknowingly, this person had previously destroyed three churches in Arizona. She now set her sights on targeting our church. The church survived the attempts of this person to destroy it, but we were scared and hurt. My district superintendent counseled me to lay off the church planting process, and just shepherd my people for a year or more to allow them to heal. I tried my best, but full-time shepherding is not a gift typically found in most visionary entrepreneurial pastors. My stress level was off the charts. Night after night I would plead with God, “Lord, please make me a kinder and gentler pastor so I can care for your hurting people”. One evening God finally responded. It wasn’t in an audible voice, but in an overwhelming impression: “If I wanted you to be a kinder and gentler pastor, don’t you think I would have made you that way?” I realized at that moment that my superintendent was asking me to do something God never designed me to do. If indeed this church now needed a shepherding pastor, then I needed to step aside and allow the church to search for a pastor with the temperament and gifts they now required.

Understanding our design, helps us know how to say “yes” to service opportunities that fit who we are, while also giving us permission to say “no” to service opportunities that are not in line with God’s design for our lives. Understanding one’s “Ministry Temperament”, that is your God-given design for ministry service, is the first crucial step pastoral leaders need to address if they ever want to move their army out of basic training and into the battle.