Be That Person!
For Your Family. Ministry. City
Be That Person!
For Your Family. Ministry. City
GUEST POST~ #ReimagineCHURCH... As A Society of Redeemers
Francis Frangipane
There exists a certain degree of hypocrisy among us. What I mean is, without qualms, we condemn the world for not being Christian, yet without remorse we accept we are not Christlike.
I am not saying we shouldn't cry out against evil; sin exists and we must reprove it. However, at some point we must recognize there is more to our destiny than judging sin. God is looking for the perfection of mercy within us. "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13), and to follow Christ is to walk the path of mercy toward full redemption.
Recall the words of Paul. He tells us to "have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5). He goes on to explain that Christ existed in the form of God, yet He emptied Himself, took the form of a man, and died for our sins. In other words, He saw the need, but instead of condemning man, He died for man. Paul says we are to have this same attitude in us.
I do not want to be a typical American Christian. I am hungry for more. I want to "grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head [of the church], even Christ" (Eph. 4:15). Our call is to attain "the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ" (v. 13).
Jesus said, "As the Father has sent Me, I also send you" (John 20:21). As Christ was sent into the world to pay the price for sin, so in following Him we become a society of redeemers. When wounded, we forgive; when forced to go one mile, we go two. We bless those who curse us and turn the other cheek to those who strike us. As Christ hung on the cross at Calvary and prayed, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34), so we stand before God, and on behalf of our sinful world, we pray the mercy prayer as well.
I am convinced that the more Christlike the church becomes, the greater will be the backing of Heaven. The more we become a society of redeemers, the more hope we have to see our nation turned back to God.
Adapted from Francis Frangipane's ebook, Spiritual Discernment and the Mind of Christ available in ebook format at www.arrowbookstore.com
Hubble Telescope image - March 15, 2021
US and European officials have announced December 24th, 7:20 A.M. EST for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. A $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, it is scheduled to lift-off from French Guiana. This observatory is designed to look deeper into the universe than its predecessor, detecting events occurring further back in time--more than 13.5 billion years ago. Scientists also want to use its capabilities to study atmospheres of distant planets in the hope that signs of life might be detected.
Few have ever experienced total darkness. At the bottom of a cave, or in a basement when the power shuts off perhaps. But there's typically a faint glow coming from somewhere. Even the night sky never seems truly black, because there's usually a star or two twinkling in the distance.
So it’s hard to imagine a time when all that existed was darkness, when you could travel in any direction for millions of years and still see absolutely nothing. This is the story scientists tell us of the "dark ages" that gripped the universe before the first stars ignited. They intend to show us how the cosmos ultimately became filled with light. They'll do it using the biggest telescope ever placed beyond the Earth.
The Webb telescope is on a mission to look deeper into the universe - and therefore further back in time - than even the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, which it succeeds. Equipped with a 21foot mirror and four super-sensitive instruments,
it will stare for days at a very narrow spot in the sky to detect light that’s been travelling through the immensity of space for more than 13.5 billion years.
Scientists think there should be stars, or galaxies, or black holes maybe beginning at 100 million years after the Big Bang. There may not be many to find at that time, but the telescope can see them if they are there.
Reasoning that since light travels at a finite speed in a vast and expanding cosmos, scientists say that if we keep probing deeper and deeper, we should eventually retrieve the light from the pioneer stars as they group together into the first galaxies.
This massive telescope must get past 344 hurdles to do what it’s designed to do—deploying a solar panel and radio antenna minutes after launch, opening wings of the primary mirror, unfurling a tennis court-sized shield to keep it cool and protect its vision from the glare of the sun.
Webb is complicated. According to BBC, key hardware includes 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, 400 pulleys and 90 cables totaling 1,312ft.
Why go to all this trouble? Why spend 10 years conceiving and another twenty years building a $10 billion machine to detect some faint, red blobs in the sky? Perhaps it is in search of an answer to the most fundamental of questions—Where do we come from?
Here’s the scientists’ explanations. When the universe was formed in the Big Bang, it contained only hydrogen, helium and a little lithium. Nothing else. All the heavier chemical elements in the Periodic Table were forged in stars. Carbon making up living things, nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere, and silicon in rocks were manufactured in nuclear reactions that make stars shine and in mighty explosions ending their existence. We're only here because first stars and their descendants seeded the universe with the material to make stuff.
Here’s the Bible’s explanation—In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. The Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light. Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth. God made two great lights--the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us." By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. (Genesis 1:1-3a, 14-18, 26, 27; Hebrews 11:3 NLT)
Several years ago, an anonymous author wrote--"Hundreds of top scientists worked together to build the ultimate computer, a master brain with the intellect to answer all the questions and solve all the mysteries of the world. Finally it was completed and ready for its first question. With trembling hands, one of the scientists fed in the question: 'How did the world start?' Lights flashed, wheels whirred, tumblers clicked. Finally the machine answered: 'See Genesis.'"
(c) Pastor Johnny R. Almond
Sharing faith in Christ. How do we begin?
Well, how do we start sharing math with pre-kindergarten children?
“OK, boys and girls, open your “Calculus for Everyday Use” text book to page 316.”
There was no pre-school back in 1951. When I started school in “grade 0” in 1953, the teacher asked us how high could we count. She didn’t even use a book.
So, how do we start sharing Christian faith with pre-believer children of God?
“Friend, look here in the Bible. See what it says in John 3:16.”
Christianity is straight forward and simple. YES! SIMPLE!
Heaven is perfect. Are you perfect? Can you rectify all your flaws going back to your birth to make yourself perfect? Other theologies state that all one needs to get to Heaven is more good deeds than bad. Is that perfection? How could Heaven be perfect if imperfection is allowed to enter?
Put away “The Book” for later use. Start with counting… and Who can be counted on.
Christmas in the 20th century changed greatly from what it was in the 19th. People still put up Christmas trees, a pagan tradition adopted by Christians before the 17th century rebellion. They filled stockings, and held holiday parties. What was the big difference? Christmas became commercialized. This was the fourth consecutive battle on behalf of Christ lost.
Throughout the 20th century, the attrition on the Spiritual side spiraled out of control. The holiday was celebrated as Xmas. “They’ve taken Christ out of the picture,” was the church’s nearly inaudible battle cry. Battle losses mounted to five.
Then, in the 21st century, purveyors of the Holiday Shopping Season, as it is now known, dropped the big one. Christmas shopping on the Internet. No one even had to go to the mall anymore. The fleet of Christmas ships that had been sailing since the 4th century was decimated. The War now seemed lost.
Yet some of the Christian ships are still afloat. These remaining ships must be turned to safer waters. It makes no sense to keep fighting to celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th. That has been a losing battle for nearly 1800 years.
Let’s start Commemorating (why were we celebrating needing to have God “save our bacon” in the first place) the Birth of Christ on Worldwide communion day; the first Sunday in October. This may look like a defeat to the non-Christian world. For the sake of the Saving Grace offered through Christ, however, it would be a strategic retreat.
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Your partner in multiplication,The Exponential TeamCopyright © 2021 Exponential. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in or attended an Exponential event.
This eBook is part of our FREE library of more than 80 eBooks by national leaders. Click here to download other eBooks.Right now—at this time in history—the church is poised to participate in an awakening. A moment when the Holy Spirit comes and empowers God’s people for more. What begins with holy dissatisfaction—“there must be more”—is fulfilled in a newfound empowerment to action. The same empowered commission promised to the first followers of Jesus is promised to us as well. In 2022, we’ll discover a growing awareness of the Spirit’s work and leadership while also realizing that we will always be more effective if we move with the Holy Spirit. Our goal is to help inspire and shape your paradigm for multiplication of Jesus' mission, connect you to a community of Kingdom activists, and equip you to turn ideas into action. We want to personally invite you to Empowered Orlando 2022—and also encourage you to check out our free online community where you can connect with like-minded Kingdom leaders!
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Guest Post ~ You Are Not Inerrant
“You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Physicist Richard Feynman
In Leo Tolstoy’s novel The Death of Ivan Ilych, the protagonist, Ivan Ilych, is a smart, competent attorney dying from an unknown cause. Tolstoy describes a scene in which Ivan has a sobering realization while gazing at his sleeping daughter, Gerasim.
“Ivan Ilych’s physical sufferings were terrible, but worse than the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings which were his chief torture.
“His mental sufferings were due to the fact that at night, as he looked at Gerasim’s sleepy, good-natured face with its prominent cheek-bones, the question suddenly occurred to him: ‘What if my whole life has been wrong?’
“It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true.”
What a probing and hopefully troubling question.
We are all wrong. Both as individuals and collectively, we are wrong about many things.
As a species (homo sapiens), we are undoubtedly and currently doing things that are terribly wrong. Just look at some of the failings of the recent past.
In the near and distant future, and for the rest of human history, humans will look with aghast at things we now consider normal and acceptable. What we accept as best-practices in the 21st century will be considered uninformed, unnecessary, even harmful, and wrong. (I’ll make a prediction: in the near future we will wonder why, in this modern era, health care was not readily available to every person on the planet.)
On a personal level, you and I are wrong about many things. There are specific areas of our lives that are wrong and need to change.
When was the last time you admitted being wrong and revised your opinion accordingly? Know this: there are areas of your life in which you are wrong. If you think you’re an exception to this statement, your pushback betrays your naiveté, lack of self-awareness, and error.
The good news is, we can change. Thoreau said, “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life through conscious endeavor.”
Take an audit of your life; particularly consider areas in which you have a fixed mindset – areas that have been unassailable, uneditable, and beyond reproach. Also investigate areas that are part of your cultural heritage – ideologies that you inherited from your family and society. (Remember, you were not born with any opinions or beliefs; they’re not part of your DNA, you choose to endorse them.) Consider your blind spots; everyone has at least one. (You’ll need help you on this issue because you are…blinded…to your your blind spot.)
If taken seriously, this exploration could be one of the most significant and revealing events of your life.
We often think that if we admit we are wrong, people will think less of us. I think just the opposite; people will admire us. I’ll close with this story from Adam Grant’s book, Think Again (page 73).
“In the early 1990s, the British physicist Andrew Lyne published a major discovery in the world’s most prestigious science journal. He presented the first evidence that a planet could orbit a neutron star – a star that had exploded into a supernova. Several months later, while preparing to give a presentation at an astronomy conference, he noticed that he hadn’t adjusted for the fact that the Earth moves in an elliptical orbit, not a circular one. He was embarrassingly, horribly wrong. The planet he had discovered didn’t exist.
“In front of hundreds of colleagues, Andrew walked onto the ballroom stage and admitted his mistake. When he finished his confession, the room exploded in a standing ovation. One astrophysicist called it “the most honorable thing I’ve ever seen.”

A need for revitalization does not necessarily mean an entire church is unhealthy. Even the healthiest of established churches have at least one area requiring work, if not several. Sometimes the entire church needs revitalization. In other cases, a particular area of the church needs revitalization.
In fact, the majority of established churches could use some degree of revitalization. Around 65% of churches are in plateau or decline. This one statistic reveals close to 7 out of 10 churches are in need of revitalization. Granted, a lack of growth does not mean the entire church is failing, but it does indicate something is missing—somewhere the church is deficient.
What happens to cause this problem? The reasons are numerous, and each church’s story is different. However, one key theme is simply the patterns a church develops over time. Established churches have established patterns. These congregations have a consistent (or established) schedule. They keep doing the same established programs year after year. Annual events become embedded into the culture. Such is the nature of an established church. But these patterns can create either a healthy movement or an unhealthy movement in the church.
Healthy established patterns create healthy churches. Unhealthy established patterns create unhealthy churches. Clearly, more churches have unhealthy patterns as compared with healthy patterns. The stats are undeniable. But I’ll dig deeper. There is more beneath the surface. Numerical declines are merely a symptom, not the root problem.
Pastors become comfortable. Status quo pastors have status quo churches. Once a church has accepted a pastor, it’s easy for that pastor to cruise. Change always comes with a level of risk. Shepherding is impossible detached from risk-taking. When pastors stop taking risks, churches become complacent.
Budgets get messy. Churches can go years without a budget strategy, creating a jumbled mess of operating line items and an endless list of designated accounts. I recently saw a church budget with a designated account for a cassette tape ministry. Church budgets are often the most common area in need of revitalization.
Ministries linger without purpose. Established patterns of programs are wonderful, until they stop working. Unfortunately, churches are guilty of hanging on to programs instead of desiring the fruit they produce. When the program itself is more important than the results, a church loses the purpose of ministry.
Facilities become cluttered and dated. Deferred maintenance has killed numerous ministers with good intentions. Neglected facilities become an albatross around the neck of many pastors. Even the best established churches often have closets full of junk—old trophies, dusty puppets, and binders of music from the 1970s. In severe cases, the entire campus has not been touched in decades.
Technology outpaces staff. When a church has established patterns and rhythms, the temptation is to neglect technology. In a lot of churches, a decade can pass before it becomes necessary to adopt new technology. Unfortunately, by then it’s often too late and staff are too far behind.
A church needing revitalization in one of these areas is not necessarily unhealthy. However, most established churches need help with at least one. When multiple areas of the church fall behind, the effects are compounded.

Hard to know what to protest.
Everywhere we look, something clamors for attention—loudly. Racism. Gender discrimination. Police violence. Misinformation campaigns. Border patrols. Climate change. International politics. Gun violence. Economic inequities. Each item on this list represents a genuine, life-altering, probably life-threatening emergency. And that’s to say nothing of less-visible, or less-approachable, threats to justice: mathematical algorithms, gerrymandering, dark money in politics, and (at least in the United States) Christian nationalism.
Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly before your God—what does that look like nowadays?
There’s no shortage of people expressing themselves. I see actual protests, or videos of protests, multiple times a day, every day, protesting everything under the sun, and many of these are warranted. Each protest involves a group of people holding up signs, chanting or shouting. Some involve considerable shouting. A few involve property destruction or violence. Many involve identifying and dehumanizing one or more enemies. There’s a lot—a lot, a lot—of anger.
I see anger on social media, too, sometimes explosive but more often preemptive. A friend posts a meme, tersely phrased, all of twelve words to “sum up” an enormously complicated and highly emotional issue. The meme itself will be plain-spoken and absolutist, with no room for discussion, and it’s often accompanied by commentary from the person who posted it: “If you don’t agree with this, unfriend me right now.”
If we’re truthful, we must confess that almost nothing can be fully expressed in twelve words. Things are nuanced. Even something we believe to be a moral absolute most often cannot be expressed in a meme or a protest sign; when we try, we have to oversimplify or use coded language that creates an insider-outsider dynamic. And when we decline to engage with the other—“if you don’t agree with this, unfriend me right now”—we put an end to any potential for relationship. Change doesn’t happen in the absence of relationship.
What I see happening on both ends of the political and cultural spectrums is something that feels like idolatry of purity, as if our continued moral righteousness depends absolutely on never mixing with anyone whose viewpoints differ. Some of us fear being influenced by the other. Some of us fear appearing to approve of the other. In either case, it feels neither productive nor loving.
Sometimes I wonder whether our faith communities are feeling called to change hearts or change the rules. Obviously, what governments dictate matters. But it’s not all that matters, and it’s not what matters most. I suspect that God would prefer we be transformed by Spirit than forced to behave in certain ways by a legal system. Both matter—but I want to talk about transformation first.
Transformation, or the changing of hearts, simply doesn’t happen at scale because big groups of people get really loud about it. Protests, hate speech, and expressions of anger are all extremely unlikely to change hearts. When I think back to the times when I have been changed, I realize it usually hasn’t been the result of a single dramatic experience; rather, it’s the accumulation of many surprising acts of love.
When someone I disagree with (or fear) demonstrates love and care for me personally, and when that happens repeatedly over a long period of time, then my point of view might be changed. It’s about relational contact, and it has to happen more than once. Quippy slogans, harsh words, and even logical arguments cannot do what sharing a dinner can do.
This is one good argument for faith communities to seek relationships with each other, with faraway faith communities. In the United States, most people don’t live in places where political views are mixed. Most people live in places that are either solidly Democrat or solidly Republican. If we hope to engage meaningfully with fellow human beings about social or political matters of the day, we have to escape the echo chambers. Can your faith community seek relationship with a faith community that’s physically and culturally different from your own, but still within your same country? Can you do it seeking genuine, long-term relationship with mutual listening and worship and prayer? Or can you consider encouraging the individual members of your congregation to seek and maintain such relationships?
All this is not to say that protest and witness are unimportant. One-on-one relationship can change hearts, but not laws—at least not quickly—and sometimes what’s needed is a change of law. But again, this doesn’t happen as a result of social media posts.
Strikingly, in the past year, people (at least in the United States) don’t trust their government or nonprofits (including religious groups) as much as they trust business. That’s right—business. The corporate sector has a higher trust rating than any other sector in the United States. People trust businesses to make moral decisions and enact them effectively. Moreover, there’s data to indicate that a statement on an ethical issue that comes from a high-level CEO has as much effect on public opinion as a statement coming from a politician or celebrity.
On the one hand, this feels utterly bizarre as we draw the natural conclusion: groups attempting to influence public policy might have a greater effect if they lobby the C-suite instead of government officials. (And of course, nothing says you can’t do both.) But on the other hand, if we’re looking at this as members of faith communities, that’s not so strange, historically. Have faith communities not always had a responsibility to minister to all people, including those in positions of tremendous economic power? Whether we’re happy about today’s trust and power landscapes or not—and most of us are not—can we acknowledge the dynamics and speak loving truth to those who hold power?
The church has always had a place in the broader questions of society, both in terms of speaking to individual lives and in terms of speaking to laws and societal norms. Faith communities don’t get to make laws, and that’s crucial, but they do have a responsibility to lovingly, consistently articulate truth as best they can, even (or especially) in times of radical social change.
But the tools of people of faith must differ from the tools of the world. Though God is very much with us in moments of righteous anger, that anger, if separate from love, generally doesn’t provide openings for someone else to change. Though God is unlikely to insist we engage with someone whose words or actions harm us, complete and categorical refusal to engage provides relative safety but not potential for transformation. We cannot forget that God changes hearts, but God most often does so through human interactions.
So what does God ask of us?
How do we witness now?
Dave Robinson, the Executive Director of Church Movements at CRU, discusses the changing face of evangelism with host Gary Kendall. As our culture changes so must our vocabulary and strategies.

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A Paradigm Shitf for Business Leaders (BL)
by Thomas Bush
As the pandemic begins to wane, many areas of ministry are doing a “reset.” Asking the question, “How should we emerge from the pandemic to serve the purposes of God.” I have been thinking with leaders who gather BLs in their community for equipping and fellowship. The thoughts represented here are from my training as a community transformation specialist.
©Thomas Bush, Director, Community Impact ROI. communityimpactroi.org, Email: tbush@visionsd.org, (619) 742-8694
Thomas Bush, Director, Prayer Assist Ministries (http://www.prayerassist.org/), and Men Praying Everywhere CA, Email: tbush@visionsd.org, Cell: (619) 742-8694, New Address: 4755 71st St, La Mesa, CA 91942
Prayer Assist consults with and equips pastors, leaders and faith-based organizations to produce more prayer-energized disciples and ministries.
"Prayer is responding to God's invitation to come into His presence"
#ReimaginePRAYER... #ReimagineCITIES...