Yesterday we had a guest speaker at church. He was a director of missions from some county in NC. He was a fantastic speaker. He kept your attention, had good stuff to say and was quite entertaining. I know that probably shouldn’t be on “the list” of what makes a good pastor, but it helped either way. I wanted to share the four games he said people play in church and then the four things that people can do after they quit playing games that will make a great church.
Game #1 – Blame game. It’s always someone else’s fault when something doesn’t go right.
Game #2 – Excuses game. We always have an excuse.
Game #3 – Power game. It was almost funny when he said this, you could hear the oh’s coming from people across our congregation. This one stabbed us in the heart. That is one of the main problems in our church. Someone gets put at the head of the committee and they say “It’s mine. mine. mine. mine!” in a four year old voice. That was funny when he said it, but honest to God, that’s the way people act.
Game #4 – Procrastination – I’ll get saved…tomorrow. I’ll go visit them..tomorrow. I’ll start reading my Bible…tomorrow. We all know how that one goes.
And once you give these games up…you should take these steps taken from Matthew 9:35-37:
#1 Go! – Jesus went and never stopped. He got out and talked to and touched the people that no one else would.
#2 See! – When you go, you start seeing and you can’t see until you go. When you start seeing people, you start seeing the needs of people.
#3 Compassion – When you go and see people in need, you automatically develop compassion for them. Anyone that has been on a missions trip can attest to this. There’s no way to describe that feeling of what you see when you went.
#4 Pray – When you go and see the needs of people and develop this compassion for them, you will pray. Pray like you never have before. And prayer moves mountains. He fills needs and moves other people to go!
This was a very condensed version of his sermon…unfortunately none of the funny stuff included, but it really touched me yesterday. I have all these grand plans in my head and yet I procrastinate and never go.