Tips for Fruitful Ministry

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Transcript:

Well, tonight I’d like for us to look at a passage from 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, but if you’ll indulge me for just a few minutes, I’d like to tie it into what I discussed with you on Wednesday nights, or Wednesday nights, last Wednesday night, about the ministry of our church. And some of you were here and some of you were not, so just to make sure we’re all on the same page as far as understanding what it is that I’m talking about. I laid out some, for lack of a better word, goals.

I laid out some goals of where I believe we need to head as a church, where the direction after much prayer and consideration, that I believe the Lord has has led me that we need to refocus on the very simple tasks that God has called the church to do. And I’ve been reading a book by the president of Lifeway that talks about different views of church membership, the biblical view versus the one that has become all too commonplace in America, where church membership is a country club type of thing with privileges.

And, you know, I’ve preached against that sort of thing, but I find myself, it’s human nature, especially for us Americans, we fall back into the habit of, well, I like things this way, I want to be ministered to this way, and it becomes about what we get out of church, whereas as I’ve prayed about this, I really see a need for us to refocus on what we put into church, and as I say this, please understand it’s not shame on you. But I think all churches go through this from time to time where we need to refocus on what is the job that God’s given us to do. What are we doing in any task you do?

You know, you stop and ask yourself, why am I doing this? And if we’re not doing the right thing, if we’re not doing it for the right reasons, we change course. And as I’ve thought about what are the most basic jobs of the church.

It really comes down to prayer, discipleship, and worship. We’re to pray together. We’re to make disciples together.

You may say, well, what about evangelism? I think evangelism is part of discipleship because we don’t want to just lead people to Christ and abandon babes in Christ to the world. I think God should call the spiritual DHS on us if we do that.

Now, we want to grow them up to maturity. So, it’s an ongoing process of discipleship. We’re to pray together, we’re to make disciples together, and we’re to worship together.

And not necessarily in that order, but we’re to do all of those things. And those are things that our church does, but sometimes we, you know this, not just in church, but in life, we can let sometimes good things distract us from the most important things. And as I’ve thought about these things, what are we supposed to do?

Our most basic jobs are to pray, to make disciples, and to worship. I thought, how do we refocus on that? And as I shared with those of you who were here Wednesday night, my feeling on it has long been that churches, at least anywhere I’ve been the pastor, I feel like I just shoot the arrow off in this direction, and then wherever it lands, I paint the target around that and say, oh, that was good.

I had no idea where I was shooting the arrow in the first place, but thank God we got it somewhere, right? We’re more likely to hit a worthwhile target if we know what target we’re shooting for. So I’d rather paint the target on the wall and then shoot the arrow at that.

And if we miss, we keep working on it and keep narrowing our focus and trying to hit the arrow. I said all that to say this, I laid out three goals that I think could help us refocus. They’re baby steps, they’re small, they’re not earth-shattering, but they’ll help us get our attention back on the most important things.

And so what I’ve asked you to join me in doing is to commit to praying. And by the way, there are cards out there on the table in the entryway if you’d like one of these to take with you to remind you. That we commit to pray by name for non-believers we know for 15 minutes each day asking God’s help in reaching them.

And what I shared Wednesday night was this, that we pray for the lost all the time. I feel like every time we come together and we pray in a meeting, We pray for the lost. Who are the lost that we’re praying for? Years ago, reading the book of Daniel, I noticed God was always answering Daniel’s prayers.

Daniel was asking God for specific things that were part of his will. Daniel wasn’t just praying, God bless me. He was praying specific things.

And that convicted me, yes, I pray for the lost, but do I pray for lost people? Do I pray for them in theory, in abstract, as a group, or do I pray for lost people that I know? Are there people that I’m begging God to draw to himself?

Are there people in my world that I would lose sleep over asking by name that God would help me reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ? And what I would say to you, what I’d say to myself is if I don’t care enough to pray for them, I don’t really care that much about their spiritual condition. And 15 minutes a day I think is nothing.

and you get a list of a few people, and you start praying for them by name, I bet you’ll go over 15 minutes easily. And you might think, well, I don’t know that many lost people. Well, there’s a problem, too.

We need to get out in the community among people who need Jesus. But I’ve asked you to commit to 15 minutes a day of your prayer time, praying by name for lost people that you know. Make a list. And you know what?

Give us the list, too. And we’ll put it on our Wednesday night prayer list, prayer list, and we’ll pray for each other’s friends and family and neighbors. the second thing was a commitment as a group to share the gospel with at least 15 people a month somebody said well I don’t know 15 the group not each of you I mean that’d be great hey if you want to go out and share the gospel with 15 people a month do it if you want to share the gospel with more than 15 people a month just yourself I’m not gonna I’m not against that but what I’m talking about here is a baby step you know we have a we’re a small church we have about 15 that are here on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights of each of us shared the gospel with one person per month.

There’s the goal. You know what? People aren’t going to come to Christ if we don’t share the gospel with them. And as I wrote this number down, I thought, my goodness, that’s a pitiful number.

15 a month? But you know what? We’ve got to start somewhere.

And you may be sitting there tonight saying, I already share the gospel with people. Well, thank you. I’m glad you do.

But I’m not always as intentional about it as I should be. And I’m probably not the only one here. But for me, having a goal makes me more inclined to do it.

If I make a list of things I need to do before the day starts, I get a lot more done than if I just, as I think of it, if I’m aiming for a goal. So we as a group share the good news of Jesus Christ with at least 15 people a month. And you’ll notice too that that doesn’t say lead 15 people to Christ a month. You can’t coerce a profession of faith out of somebody.

And I’ve read books on how to get people to accept Christ. And a lot of it involves trickery and pushing, and you know what? That probably does more harm than good, because you lead unconverted people to a false assurance of Jesus Christ, and you vaccinate them against the gospel when it’s presented the next time. So I’m not saying, don’t feel like a failure.

I didn’t lead 15 people to Christ. I’m asking that we as a group share the gospel 15 times under the leadership of the Holy Spirit and let him take care of the results. And then finally, we as a church set a goal to increase our Sunday morning worship attendance by at least 15 people within six months by reaching out to our community with Jesus. Why is that important?

Because I don’t want anybody to think, well, this is about, we’ve got to get more people in the church. We need a bigger church. We need more money coming in.

Look, if the reason we do evangelism, if the reason we reach out to the community is because we need their money, it’s not going to work. I pastored a church years ago that was going through financial, rough financial times. I mean, unlike anything we’ve faced.

And somebody said, well, we just need to reach more people, and they’ll bring their money with them. And I thought, okay, this is not heading in a good direction. And then somebody else said, well, as long as they don’t come in and try to change anything.

And I thought, okay, we’re not concerned about people going to hell. We want them to come in, sit down, shut up, and give us their money. This is a great plan.

Okay, the reason for this is not so we can get their money, or so that we can have a bigger church, Or so we can tell First Baptist, hey, we had a 50% increase in six months. No, the reason for this is that in the culture today, worship attendance is one of the best number of measures of the impact we’re having on the community. It used to be church membership, but every church in America today has about three times as many members as it really has, and we’re no exception to that.

And you go by baptisms, but you know as well as I do. The convention has gone for years by baptisms, but you know as well as I do. You baptize somebody and a lot of times you never see them again.

And that’s another problem to deal with, but that’s a problem for another day. People who study this now are saying how many people show up to worship is a good indicator. It’s not all about numbers, but that’s a good measure of the impact you’re having on the community.

How do we do that? We build relationships and we reach people with the gospel. If God tells you somebody you see one time, you meet them, and hey, I’ve got to share the gospel with them, then you do it.

I’m not against that. But knocking on strangers’ doors or grabbing strangers at the store, without any relationship behind it, I found out it’s been a lot more effective in my own ministry, getting to know people and talking to them about Jesus Christ. If God says, hey, you’ve got one opportunity, you share the gospel with them, now do it. But there’s nothing wrong with taking the time to build a relationship with somebody that opens doors for you to share Jesus with them in a way that they will understand in their situation.

and we build relationships with people. Be genuinely involved in people’s lives. Genuinely care about people.

Take the blinders off sometimes. And it means getting involved. It means inviting your neighbors over for dinner.

I know people don’t do that so much anymore. It’ll sound weird, but a lot of people in our society are just looking for connections somewhere, looking for somebody who cares about them, and we can be those people. We can get involved in things in the community where we meet people.

Greg’s involved in the Lions Club and meets people all the time. Julie does quilting and meets people all the time. And she said that all the people in her circle are involved in church, but I’m sure they’d open up a chair for somebody else who loved to quilt and needed to know about Jesus.

We all have some way that God has gifted us and enabled us to connect with people. I’ve not given this to you as a new program. I hate programs. I hate programs. I know back in the 80s and 90s, churches would start big programs and they’d be real effective.

They’d bring in lots of people and you were supposed to do programs. Our society is so burnt out on programs. Our churches are so burnt out on programs. And we will work ourselves to death and not accomplish anything. Hey, I’m all for working ourselves to death if we accomplish something. But this is not a program.

It’s a goal. These are things that the Word of God tells us we’re supposed to do anyway. We’re supposed to pray for the lost in our community. We are supposed to lead people to Christ and help build them up in the faith once we do.

and we are supposed to build relationships with people that help us to do that and we’re supposed to worship and bring people to worship. God deserves all of our worship. These are things that we’re supposed to be doing anyway.

And all I’m saying to you is let’s put a goal on it so we know what we’re working toward. And I hope that you’ll join me in these things as I said the other night and I’ll keep working through this and working on this and we’ll try to come up with some ways to measure how we’re doing and for you to be able to say, yes, I shared the gospel with this many people this week without you feeling like you’re going to be voted out of the church if you didn’t, or you didn’t as many times as somebody else. Some way to share that so we can see what kind of success we’re having.

Folks, this is not about building a bigger church. It’s not about building a wealthier church. It’s about refocusing and making sure we’re the most obedient church that we can be to the great commission that God’s given us.

And so I hope you’ll join me in these things. And as we look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 tonight, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, I’ve already cut somewhat into my time, so I’m going to go through this as quickly as I can and share with you a few things that I actually, I had the sermon prepared for the night that we ended up not having electricity here. So this was a few weeks ago, but it ties in with what we talked about tonight and what we talked about Wednesday night.

I want to share with you some tips for fruitful ministry, some things that Paul describes about his own ministry, that I think explains some of the success that he had as a missionary. Starting in chapter 2, verse 1, he said, For you yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you that it was not in vain. He’s writing to them, and he’s reminding them of the ministry that he had among them.

Paul often had detractors. He often had people who were against him. If you’ve never made anybody mad, then you’re probably not doing anything.

But Paul, as someone who would come into these churches and he was actually accomplishing something for God, sometimes people would be against him. Sometimes people would question his authority as an apostle. Sometimes people would question his methods of doing things.

And so we see in some of his letters where he’s writing and he’s giving the history of what he’s done as a defense of himself and the message he preached. Because they weren’t just saying, oh, we don’t like Paul. It was undermining Paul because we don’t like the message he preaches.

So when Paul defends himself, it’s because they were using him to undermine the message of the gospel. So he writes the people at Thessalonica and says, this is what I’ve done. This is the ministry I’ve had.

And for them especially, he talks about his example. He talks about his example a lot to the people at Thessalonica because they were one of those churches. I heard a pastor when I was growing up who would say all the time that some people are so heavenly minded, they’re no earthly good.

And I thought, that’s not a problem that I’ve seen a whole lot of. Usually it’s that Christians are too earthly minded that we’re no heavenly good. But in this case, they were so focused on the rapture, they were so focused on the second coming, and thought it was just right around the corner that many of them had sold everything.

They were just laying around all day waiting for Jesus to come back and not doing anything. And so Paul goes back to his ministry and says, follow my example, because Paul talks about how hard they worked to share the gospel, and talks about the ministry that they had among the people in Thessalonica. and basically of a way of encouraging them, of saying, we did this, and this is what you should do also.

And so he reminds them, you know our entrance unto you, you know the way we came to you, you know that what we did was not in vain, but even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as you know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel with much contention. He said, even after we were mistreated, even after we were so poorly treated in Philippi, he said, nevertheless, we came to you, and he says we were bold. We had boldness in God.

We had a bold confidence that made us come to you, and we spoke the gospel to you. We preached the gospel to you, and he said with much contention. It wasn’t necessarily a smooth entry.

They got lots of pushback. Lots of people wanted to argue with him. It ruffled some feathers.

And today, the gospel still ruffles feathers. Most Americans say they believe in God. And they’re okay if you talk about God in public.

But when you start talking about Jesus, everybody loses their minds. Because, see, you know, God can apparently mean whatever people want it to mean. But Jesus, we know who Jesus is.

And he said, we came to you and it ruffles feathers. And he said, we came to you and we preached the gospel to you. He said, and we were willing to fight that fight.

We came in and we boldly took the step of knowing we were going to have opposition. We preached the gospel to you anyway. We obeyed God in that way.

He said, for our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. He says, we knew that we were right. We knew that these were not for wrong motives that we were preaching the gospel.

We knew that what we were telling you was the truth. So we could come in with the confidence of saying, everything’s out in the open. What we’re telling you is the truth.

Test it. Try it. You know, I love the fact that Paul, when he was ministering in Athens, and he was disputing with the philosophers, he didn’t try to shut them down.

He didn’t try to silence them and prevent them from speaking. No, Paul stood up next to them and preached the gospel with the attitude, let the truth stand on the shelf next to the lies and let the people examine them and tell the difference. And you can come at it with that kind of confidence if you know that what you’re saying is the truth.

And if you know that you’re doing it out of a pure motive, which is out of concern for people. They were concerned enough for the people at Thessalonica that they came and they contended to share the gospel. He said, but as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts.

But he said, as God has given us the opportunity, as God has entrusted us with the gospel, he said, we’ve gone and we’ve spoken, and not in a way as though we were trying to please men, but we’re trying to please God who tries our hearts. A couple things we need to know here. The gospel is precious.

The gospel is something to be treasured. And when I say treasure, I don’t mean that we hold it close and we never share it. But I mean that we realize its value and the fact that God has entrusted us with this priceless message.

That should make us realize we can’t afford to hide it from other people. But that it’s something that is vitally important to be shared. So he talks about being entrusted with the gospel and he said, like God entrusted us with it, so we went out and spoke it.

And he said, not as pleasing men, but God. And part of our ministry as believers means that we have to stand on the Word of God. We have to affirm the truth of the Word of God and stick with his message.

And sometimes it’s not going to be politically correct. Sometimes it’s not going to be a feel-good message. Sometimes we’re going to have to tell people the hard truth.

But we’re not here to make everybody happy. We’re here to honor God, and we’re here to be obedient to God, he says, who tries our hearts. It’s God who’s going to be our judge.

And we don’t say things to be mean. We don’t deliberately try to offend people. But if people don’t like when they hear the truth, that’s not our fault.

He said our ultimate obedience is to God. And there’s something very freeing in that, to realize that as long as I’m obedient to God, that’s the important thing. And sure, sometimes people aren’t going to like it, but God’s in charge, not me.

And God takes care of the results, not me. That takes a lot of pressure off of us when we finally come around to that point. So the first thing that we need in order to have a fruitful ministry is a bold obedience to God.

We need to be willing to be obedient when it costs us something, when it’s hard. They weren’t just obedient. They were bold in their obedience.

When God sent them to Thessalonica, there was some conflict involved. He said, but we preach the gospel anyway. Anybody can be obedient to God when it’s easy, right?

There are times that I tell my children to do something and it just happens to coincide with what they wanted to do anyway. Well, that’s easy. And you know what?

Then they jump to and they obey. That doesn’t impress me at all. That’s what they wanted to do.

I’m a whole lot more impressed by their obedience when it’s not their will. Or when it’s something that they didn’t want to do or something that’s a little hard for them. Because you push them a little bit sometimes.

You say, you’ve got to try this. Don’t just bring me your shoes to tie. You’ve been learning how to tie them.

you go time. Sometimes it’s hard to be obedient. Anybody can be obedient when it’s easy, but God calls us to be obedient even when it’s hard, and we need bold obedience if we’re going to have a fruitful ministry in our community.

The opposite of this is letting fear lead us into disobedience, and I’m sad to tell you there’s a man on the way here tonight that I saw on the side of the road working on his lawnmower, and I thought, I really felt like God was telling me to stop and visit with him. I’ve spent three weeks rebuilding much of my lawnmower from the ground up. Brother Ken knows all about it.

Rebuilt the whole fuel system and half the electrical, and I thought, I’d stop and visit with this man. Who knows what may come of it? I didn’t.

I started thinking, I know, you’re looking at me like I’m looking at myself for this. I started thinking, well, I’m already late to Terry’s class. He’s probably busy.

He’s going to think I’m a lunatic stopping on the side of the road to talk to him about his lawnmower. I don’t know half as much as these guys who work on lawnmower, and I let fear talk me out of being obedient. And I’m using myself as that example to tell you that is no way to have a fruitful ministry.

No, we need to be obedient to God when it requires boldness. Stepping out of our comfort zone and doing what he tells us to do. Then we go on in verse 5, and he tells For neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness.

God is witness. He said, You know, and God knows, that we didn’t come to you with the intention of we’re going to flatter you people, and we’re not going to hide our true motives, that we’ve got these covetous motives. We really just want stuff, and we’re covering it up, and that’s our real reason for being here.

He said, Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ. That word burdensome. He said as people who were preaching the gospel, they were entitled to support. They were entitled to be supported in their labor so that they could make a living.

The Bible teaches that, as uncomfortable as it is for me to say. The Bible does teach that. But Paul a couple times made the purposeful decision, the on-purpose decision to say we are not going to be a burden to you.

In other words, we’re not going to accept any support from you is what he means by that. because the people at Thessalonica were dealing with lots of people who just wanted to lay around and wait for Jesus to return and be spiritual and watch the sky and not work. And this is the same church that Paul said, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.

And so Paul made it clear to them that even though he was entitled to his support, he said for the sake of appearance to this particular church because of what was going on there, he said we didn’t come and expect what was rightfully ours. He said we didn’t take a dime from the church at Thessalonica. We didn’t expect support.

We didn’t expect any glory. We didn’t expect to be honored among you. He said we didn’t come expecting stuff.

We didn’t come trying to flatter you and ingratiate ourselves to you. He said we just, what he paints here is a picture of humility. What he paints here is that we came here for one reason, that we’re servants of Jesus Christ. And folks, for us to have a fruitful ministry, we need to have transparent humility.

We need to have transparent humility. Humility, we know what that means. And we may know what that means.

Humility is not putting yourself down. Humility is simply realizing your rightful place and esteeming others better than you. See, pride looks at the self and says, I’m better than them, they’re down here, I’m up here.

Humility doesn’t say, I’m down here and they’re up there. Humility says, I’m down here with you. I’m no different than you are.

And yes, Paul had been called to be an apostle, but he was still just a sinner saved by grace. He was just a guy who deserved death and separation in hell, who’d been freed from that through the blood of Jesus Christ and came to tell them about it. And transparency means that they can see everything.

They can see everything. And that’s uncomfortable, to let people in to see your whole life. That yes, I’m a real person with real hopes, real dreams, real struggles, real problems, everything’s not just..

. He didn’t come in and put on the Sunday morning facade. He was real with these people.

And one objection we hear over and over in our world today to Christians and to Christianity is that Christians are fake. That we pretend like we’ve got it all together when we really don’t. And there may be some Christians who do that because they want to look like everything’s perfect and they don’t have any problems. There may be some Christians, maybe some of us in this room, who put on the facade, not so we can look better than we really are, but just to not bother anybody else.

Can I let you in on a little secret? I’m convinced that part of the reason, part of the reason that 2016 was such a big election year for Bernie Sanders and for Donald Trump, is because whether you believe it or not, a lot of people believed that they were being real, that they were being honest. When Donald Trump rips some statement on Twitter and it just sounds like it’s off the top of his head, when he does that at a press conference, people look at that and say, we’ve never seen a politician who does that before, or at least it’s been a really long time. And there were a lot of people who were just looking for somebody who’s real. The world doesn’t want to look at Christians and see that we’ve got everything put all together and that we’re just so wonderful and you can be like us.

They want to be loved by somebody who’s real. They want to be reached by somebody who’s real. And we don’t think we’re better than everybody, but we just, we’re who they are. We are sinners and we’re saved by grace. And we still have the same struggles, we still have the same hopes and dreams and fears, but we are saved by a loving and forgiving God and we can show them how to also.

So, transparent humility is very lacking in our society and people are hungry for it. Third of all tonight, looking at verse 7, But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children, so being affectionately desirous of you. We were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were dear unto us.

He talks about how much they loved them. Third of all, for us to have a fruitful ministry, we need to have genuine affection. for people.

It does us no good to be transparent and let us see who we really are if who we really are is a group of people who doesn’t care about them, right? Don’t let them inside that facade. Now, what we need to do is cultivate hearts of love toward the people outside of these four walls, to have genuine affection for people.

I made the statement off the cuff Wednesday night, but then I was convicted by it later. I hate that when my words come back to haunt me later on, But building off of something Lawana said, I told you all that we can’t reach people if we don’t love them and we can’t love them if we don’t know them. And man, later on that night, it was like the Holy Spirit grabbed me by the collar and said, did you hear that?

Folks, we need to have genuine love for people. We don’t need to love them so they’ll build our church. We don’t need to love them so they’ll bring their money.

We don’t need to love them so they’ll be just like us. We need to love them because Jesus loved them, because Jesus loved them enough to die for them. Jesus loved them enough to shed his blood and give his life for them.

We should at least love them enough to want them to know that. And I tell you what, I have seen people come, I think back to my college days, and I’ve seen people come to the campus and build relationships with people and be that person that they could call at 3 a. m.

when they had a problem to be the one who was there at their darkest day, and I’ve seen them have real success at pointing people to Jesus. And I’ve seen the people come to campus with the big signs who were so angry for no apparent reason, yelling out horrible names, calling girls horrible names for the way they were dressed, screaming at them to repent, yelling at boys for being homosexuals because they were wearing pink, not realizing that it was breast cancer awareness week on campus, just showing no love whatsoever at the people they said they were preaching the gospel to. They didn’t reach anybody for Jesus that I know.

I never saw it happen. The world is full of people screaming at us trying to get us to do stuff. Screaming at us wanting us to bend to their will.

People are looking for genuine affection. If we want to have a fruitful ministry, by the way, when I say fruitful ministry, don’t count yourself out if you’re not in paid vocational ministry. As a believer in Christ, you have a ministry.

There’s some way He’s called you to reach other people. You have a ministry. And if you want to have a fruitful one, it’s got to start with genuine affection, genuine love for the people you minister to.

And fourth of all, we