Tough issues. Real issues. Coming from real kids we work with week after week. This got the attention of the 102 leaders who joined us for Hand in Hand this month. If you read my previous blog you’ll know that I tossed up a lot of questions, but not really any answers…The main question being, how should the local church respond when their communities are in crisis? Poverty. HIV/AIDS. Hopelessness. Our communities need us!!! During Hand in Hand, Amy shared a powerful teaching on just that…
One way the church needs to respond is spiritually – to know God’s heart and to cultivate it as our own.
As church leaders, we need to allow God’s heart for Knowledge to become our own – seeking and praying for wisdom, knowing the needs around us, allowing God to guide us and work through us.
We also need to have God’s heart for Discipleship - to follow Christ, to be life-long learners, and to follow Christ’s examples in ministry, namely loving people well.
God’s heart for the Body of Christ needs to ours as well – recognizing that each person has a valuable part to play, knowing that some may need more care than others at a given time, and always being ready to help a person in need.
We also need God’s heart towards Sin to be our heart towards sin. Some would say love the sinner but hate the sin. But it’s so much more than this. So often we fear sin because of what it can do in our midst. Our flesh wants to punish, blame, control, retaliate, condemn, kick-out… But we also know that sin is a defeated foe because of Christ’s work on the cross. The only thing we have to fear about sin is how Satan uses it to keep people from our churches. People who avoid church out of shame, people who leave church because of judgment and punishment, people who need to be loved by the heart of God.
After teaching how the church should respond spiritually, Amy concluded with how we also need to respond practically. Basic problem-solving skills that few of our leaders had ever been trained in. Identifying the problem, analyzing it, developing possible solutions, planning, implementing, evaluating, revising, and celebrating progress.
Anyways, I could go on and on and on…the bottom line is that our church leaders were convicted, challenged, equipped and inspired by what they heard. And the responses were amazing!
As church leaders, we need to allow God’s heart for Knowledge to become our own – seeking and praying for wisdom, knowing the needs around us, allowing God to guide us and work through us.
We also need to have God’s heart for Discipleship - to follow Christ, to be life-long learners, and to follow Christ’s examples in ministry, namely loving people well.
God’s heart for the Body of Christ needs to ours as well – recognizing that each person has a valuable part to play, knowing that some may need more care than others at a given time, and always being ready to help a person in need.
We also need God’s heart towards Sin to be our heart towards sin. Some would say love the sinner but hate the sin. But it’s so much more than this. So often we fear sin because of what it can do in our midst. Our flesh wants to punish, blame, control, retaliate, condemn, kick-out… But we also know that sin is a defeated foe because of Christ’s work on the cross. The only thing we have to fear about sin is how Satan uses it to keep people from our churches. People who avoid church out of shame, people who leave church because of judgment and punishment, people who need to be loved by the heart of God.
After teaching how the church should respond spiritually, Amy concluded with how we also need to respond practically. Basic problem-solving skills that few of our leaders had ever been trained in. Identifying the problem, analyzing it, developing possible solutions, planning, implementing, evaluating, revising, and celebrating progress.
Anyways, I could go on and on and on…the bottom line is that our church leaders were convicted, challenged, equipped and inspired by what they heard. And the responses were amazing!
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