You share Christ with someone (Congratulations you are in the 5% of the church that does!) and they come to know Christ and get baptized.  Then what do we do?  We plug them in of course like they are an appliance or something.  Sunday School Class, Youth Choir, Handbells, Churchwide visitation, Small Group, Lock-in, and service project.  We assume that they “get in” along the way yet we never give them a test after Sunday School and we don’t even really make them sing on key.

This was not the model found in scripture.  A new believer needs a life coach, someone that can walk with them over the next 6 months to a year of their life.  Someone that will touch base with them formally and informally weekly to teach them how to pray, how to study scripture, how to look for ways to serve others, and how to share their faith.  They do not get that on day one of Sunday School. 

The most natural person to be that life coach is the one that leads them to Christ.  But for those of you who are soul winners, you may need help.  Recruit individuals in your churches that will walk them through these critical months.  Focus on three things at first.

1.  How to pray. 

Jesus taught his disciples to pray.  You teach them.  I like that acronymn PRAY.  Praise, Repent of specific sin, Ask God to move in specific areas, and Yield to God in his directions.

2.  How to read scripture.

Start them in a book.  I like for new believers to start in John and James.  I get them to underline scripture that speaks to their heart and put a question mark next to scripture they do not understand.  When we get together we talk about it.

3.  How to look for ways to serve.

Pray one prayer all day long.  “God show me someone I can bless today.”  Then as God answers the prayer, they are to partner with him.  They may even have the opportunity to share their new faith in Christ with them.

They don’t need to be plugged in.  They are already plugged in to a power source that is much greater than our programs.  They need to learn how to turn on the switch and have a relationship with the Lord Jesus.  Then your church begins to move as Reggie McNeal says from being “program driven to people development.”

This past week my family went to the beach with my brothers and mother.  We love to get together once a year with all the cousins and hang out at the beach.  The guys get together and fish.  We caught about 15 sharks that were about 3 foot long and of course I hooked and landed the 2 biggest.  I landed two 40 inch Black Tip sharks.  Some guy working in Columbia at the state house that would probably be scared to be in the same boat with the shark said I had to throw back according to the rules and regulations.  He said they have to be 54 inches.  Not sure where he got that number but he was probably thinking to himself, “It is 54 inches they won’t even try to put it in the boat.”  My two boys caught 2 of the biggest sharks they have ever caught, put them in the boat, and my 5 year old kissed it before throwing it back. 

So I’m telling my church about this yesterday.  Then later in the service during the announcements I told them about our churchwide mission trip.  We are building a church facility in Rock Hill at New Kirk Baptist Church.  We send nearly 125 if our people and about 50 from other churches including those we have built in the past.  Awesome week.  You should sign up.  It only cost $50.  I thought about sending my kids because it would be cheaper than keeping them home!

Anyway someone visited our church this Sunday for the first time.  It was a young man and his two sisters.  They needed a ride home because they did not have a car and probably walked to church or had someone drop them off.  He misunderstood me during the announcement time and said, “How do you sign up for that week long fishin trip for $50?  I’d like to do that!”

I laughed when I heard it, then I thought. “He’s right.”  It IS a week long fishin trip.  Jesus told the first disciples who by trade were fisherman, “Follow me.  And I will make you fisher’s of men.”  He basically was saying, “Catching fish really doesn’t matter.  Follow me, and I will make your life matter.  Follow me, and you will make a real difference.  Follow me, and lives will be changed.  Follow me, and I will let you partner with me as I transform people.  Follow me, and you will make history.”

So today at work, you are on a fishin’ trip.

Life’s a Trip…Live It.

Are you ready to try an experiment?  Over half of our congregation has participated in our church-wide mission trip.  If you have had the fortune of going on a week long trip, you know how life changing it is.  It is hard to put the experience into words, but for those of you who have not been you have heard some of this testimony.  It is a week where you are totally focused on serving others, looking for opportunities to share your faith, and seeking out what God wants you to do.  Instead of going through the regular routine of work, your focus is on the work that God has set before you.  Each day you are encouraged by other believers.  When the week is over, individuals begin to count down the days until the next trip.  Why do we have to wait 51 weeks?

So here is the experiment…make life a trip.  How?  I’ve got to go to work!  Pretend you are an undercover agent at work, posing as an employee but really a missionary.  I’ve got to take care of the house and children.  Pretend you are raising a missionary.  I’m shut in!  Great.  You can be one of our greatest prayer warriors.  Be specific and follow up with staff and our prayer ministry to see how God is working.  Make phone calls, write notes, and bake cookies for someone in need.

So here is the assignment….For 40 days pray one prayer all day.

“God, show me someone I can bless today.”

Pray it all day.  Make a note and put it on your mirror.  Pray it over and over when you are getting ready for work.  Make a note and hang it from your rear view mirror.  Pray it in the car on the way to work.  Put a sticky on your computer at work and pray it throughout the day.

I promise you…God will answer that prayer.

The next step is to look for the opportunity to tell them why.  “Jesus has changed my life and served me, the least I can do is serve you.”

On our Facebook page we want to chronicle the stories of how we are partnering with God.  For those of you who are not a fan of our Facebook page, send an email to leeclamp@barnwellsc.com.  You can also write a note and mail it to the office or call Andrea at the church.  We want to celebrate how God is working through our lives.  This is not intended to lift us up, because we can’t do anything of supernatural significance on our own anyway.  This is intended to get us moving in a direction that God is already moving in.

Don’t waste any time.  Make the most of every opportunity.

Each Sunday we will give you the opportunity to let us know how many days you participated in the project and the number of individuals you were able to bless.  Over the 40 days, our goal is for us to serve 1000 people!
Life’s a Trip.  See you Sunday.

I dropped Connor off at our CDC, The Creation Station, on his birthday.  Teachers had smiles on their faces, Connor was welcomed at the door, and there was life and energy.  The level of excellence in preschool and after-school care has been raised in our community because of the Creation station.  I was talking with someone in our community that has helped to fund educational research in early intervention and they have marked our CDC as the model for the community.  I do not say this with pride or to pat ourselves on the back, but to say that you do make a difference and are responsible for raising the level of excellence in our community. 

The church should not simply be reactionary to the problems of the community.  The church shouldn’t just be the one coming behind a collapsing community and pick up the pieces. The church needs to be blazing the trail for the world to follow.  If our community is going to progress, we as the church must raise our level of excellence.

So where do we start?  First, we must not be satisfied with where we are.  One of the reasons communities die is because they want to coast and not be progressive.  If you coast, you slow to a stop. 

Second, leaders must rise up and take ownership of their community especially young leaders.   Why young leaders?  Because they haven’t figured out yet that it can’t be done.  We cannot sit back as the church and let others lead.  When someone is needed to lead something, our first reaction cannot be “I don’t have time.”  The church needs to run for city and county council, run for school board, serve on committees, and coach recreation ball. 

Third, our failure rate has to increase.  What?!  If we are not failing very much, it may mean that we are trying new things.  I think back to when we helped our city do something they had never done before:  a family day on July 4^th complete with family games, fireworks, and musical program.  Nearly 1000 people attended.  It started with an idea. 

Finally, we must begin to make more “What if” statements.  What if we tried this?  What if we did this?  What if we organized this?

Have we forgotten how to dream?  Have we settled for where we are?  Are you willing to do something about it?

If our community is going to progress towards excellence, it must first start with God’s people seeking Him.  I hope to see you at our community wide prayer gathering on Monday, March 22 at 6 pm at the circle.

Serving our city into a better tomorrow.

We finished up our leadership collaboration with Leadership Network in Dallas this past week and it has been quite a journey.  We went to Fort Worth, TX to the stockyards on Tuesday.  It looks like old time Texas with old saloons, cowboys on horses, and a long horn cattle drive where 6 cowboys lead about 20 long horn cattle down the street for people to take pictures of.  Something struck me as I stood about 5 feet from a 1000 lb longhorn walking down the street.  If one of these guys were to take off, the cowboys would be able to lasso him and hold him check…maybe.  But if all of them said, “We’re done walking this same circle track day in and day out.  There’s got to be something else out there that is better than this;” there would be a stampede and the only thing we could have done is watch the dust.

Being the missional church is simply the people of God partnering with God in his redemptive mission in the world.  This includes not only saving souls but bringing the kingdom of heaven to this earth, which is far better than what we are experiencing now.  We are serving our city into a better tomorrow.  That’s what it is all about.  If a few people want to see it happen, there are probably a few cowboys that will see to it that things are done as they always have been done.  If we stampede, there will be better community when the dust settles.  Lives will be transformed which will mean that businesses will operate more effectively, schools will be the top of the state, crime will plummet, and God will be glorified.

Continue to serve your city into a better tomorrow.

I get asked the question, “How can I be missional?” 

Allow me to use one of our church members as an example.

There is a man in our church who has had a spiritual awakening in Jesus over the past few years.  He works at a local plant.  One day he received an email from his boss that said, “Some of the people are offended by your conversations.”  This floored the man, because he couldn’t understand what he had done.  His boss then called him to his office.

The conversation went like this.

“I’ve been talking to some of your workers and they are offended by how much you talk about God and your involvement in church.”

Our church member then leaned back in his chair and sighed and said, “That’s a relief.  I thought I had done something wrong.”

The boss was perplexed and said, “You can’t talk like that to everybody.  They don’t want to hear it.”

He said, “Listen.  I can’t change who I am for this company.  Jesus changed my life.  I can always find another job.”

He then was reprimanded and dismissed. 

Folks…that’s being missional.  Check out Acts 4:18-21.

I had the pleasure of having lunch with a church planter in Barnwell, Robert Altman.  He planted Bethany Baptist Church about 3 years ago that is running about 120 in attendance now.  It was such a joy to listen to his passion.  I asked him “Why plant a church in Barnwell?”  His response, “I believe there are some people that are being overlooked by our churches.”

His church is experiencing revival as lives are being changed.  This past year they baptized 85!  Wow!  He retold a story that one of his church members told him.  A lady from his church was talking with someone they worked with.  When the individual found out that they went to the new church on Hwy 70 she warned the girl that it was a cult.  The church member was confused and said, “Why do you say that?”  She then said, “I know of someone who started going out there, and when they came to work they were changed!  Everything about them changed including their dress, the way they talked, and the way they treated others.  Something bad wrong is going on out there!”

That’s what I want them to say about our church.  When people go there they come back changed.  Jesus calls us to be transformed.  Scripture teaches that we are a new creation when we come to Christ.  The old has passed away and the new has come.

Do you remember the first time you fell in love.  Maybe it was in the third grade and your palms got sweaty for the first time and you weren’t allowed to talk to your first love because someone in the class would find out about it.  Do you remember the first time your eyes were opened to Jesus and you fell in love with him.  Jesus wants you to remember and come back to that point in your life.   He is more concerned with relationship than ritual.

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We have had a blast at Conclave in Chattanooga, TN.  It is one of the weekends I look forward to at the start of the new year.  This is the first year that my entire family has been able to come along.  It Snowed almost 6 inches!  This is the first time Connor actually remembered seeing snow and they had a blast making snowballs and playing.  The exhibit hall was a lot of fun for them as they have gotten a bunch of cool stuff.  Caden spun the wheel and it landed on an xbox 360!  Of course that only meant that we got put in the drawing to win, but we received a call from the exhibitors and they drew our name out!!  I don’t think I have ever won anything except the jelly of the month club.

The worship has been great with Steve Fee band.  Ergun Caner is a powerful speaker and the first night he really encouraged those who have felt beaten down in the ministry and made a comparison to Paul in Galations 6.  Ed Stetzer spoke today and focused on the ministry of reconciliation as opposed to the false gospel of moralism.

I sat in on Dr. Richard Ross’ breakout session which challenged us to gather prayer partners around teenagers and engage parents to equip them to disciple and pray for their teenagers.  He is such a humble and intelligent guy.  I am always challenged by him.  I got to hang out with Clayton King a bit who is one of those guys you just want to hang around.  He is a trip and is MCing the event.

I led a breakout session entitled Changing the Scorecard and had some sharp student ministers in attendance.  We looked at the current scorecards in the church that we measure to define success: budgets, baptisms, and butts in the seats.  We then worked on developing matrices to count results rather than assuming results were taking place because people were in attendance.  Had a great time with them.

The boys and I spent some much needed time together tonight at the swimming pool.  We had the pool to ourselves partly because everyone else was at the worship service.  I hate to miss anything at a conference like this, but it was important to my boys for me to swim with them and chunk them around the pool.  I missed a good message as Ergun Caner talked about discerning what God wants you to do in your current ministry and if he wants you to stay or go.  I guess I’ll get the CD and listen to it.

Tomorrow we wrap up the conference and hopefully we will be able to make it home.  The roads are pretty iced over.

My Dad taught me what it meant to give to others.  He always seemed to have some project we were doing for someone else.  We were taking pine straw off of a neighbors house or building a fence for someone else or raking someone’s yard.  One year around Christmas, he got me off the couch and said to come down into the play room and help him.  We took two large trash bags and started to fill them up with toys that I hadn’t played with in years.  We then loaded the toys up and traveled across town to the low rent apartments and stopped the car.  

I said, “What are we doing?”

He said, “Playing Santa Clause.”

We then opened up the back of the station wagon (That’s right!  We had a two-tone gray station wagon that was two-tone only because my brother helped my dad hand paint the top of the station wagon that was rusted.)  My Dad hollered, “Does anyone want some free toys?”  There was a mad rush on the car and all of my former treasures slowly started to be distributed among people that I did not know. 

Twenty years later I found myself doing the same thing with my boys.  Last year we went to the home of a child that I was mentoring and gave him some of Caden and Connor’s toys.  My boys helped gather the toys and then took the toys up to the apartment.  As we pulled away from the apartments I watched as the children with smiles on their faces began to play with the toys in the sand around the stoop. 

How will you give this Christmas?  There are so many in need around us and in other parts of the world.  Allow me to offer a few suggestions that could have an eternal impact.

• Give to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering.  100% of the funds go to foreign missionaries around the world. 
• Adopt a family and give their children Christmas presents.  Names of these families can be received from Trina and Ryan at the church office.
• Give an offering to our sister church in Pomona, Belize.  They need $1000 to finish bathroom facilities at their child development center. 
• Sponsor a child to attend our CDC.  The registration of $360/month will change an at risk child’s life forever with early intervention and allow them to attend our CDC. 
• Become a prayer partner for one of our teenagers.

This Christmas season our theme will be…Expect the Unexpected.  God always is in the business of showing up when you least expect Him.  Allow Him to work through you and bless your life as you give your life away to others.  Santa shouldn’t have all the fun.