Hello blog family! Please forgive me for my absence, this past week has really been a busy one for me since the last time I made a post to my blog. Before I get to my week, let me express my sincere appreciation for all of the positive, spiritual comments that many of you left on my last comment. I want to express my appreciation to a couple real good friends, H.B. Charles for his godly advice about the tenor and tone of my friday focuses, and Keith Witherspoon for reminding me that I am able to be transparent without being angry. Thank you both for being true friends.
I was blessed to be in attendance for the homegoing celebration for a wonderful woman, Wynona Pearl Hutchinson, who is the mother of my Pastor, Joe A. Carter, held at the Fairview Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, OK, where Dr. John A. Reed Jr. is the Pastor. My travel was adventerous to say the least. Flying on United Airlines to Chicago O'Hare Airport is not something that I would recommend to anyone with any thoughts of being happy. My flight from Newark was 22 minutes late which caused me to miss my connecting flight, which is really fortunate because even if I would have made that flight my luggage did not make the plane, which means that I would have made it to OKC but my luggage would have stayed in Chicago...NOT COOL! The airlines wanted to redirect me to Denver and then to OKC, but that is entirely too much flying. So they got me on an American Airlines flight direct into OKC with my luggage in tow.
The funeral services was outstanding, with a lot of Pastors showed up from all around the country to support Pastor Carter. Wynona's Pastor, Claude White, Greater Faith Church, Waukegan, IL preached an outstanding message out of Psalms 92 which he tagged the Nature of Righteousness. This was a very difficult time to preach for him, but the Lord showed up and brought him through. My flight back home was without incident and I made it home with my luggage safe and sound.
This past Lord's Day, I continued our series on Acts 2 which I call Created For A Community, with an exposition on verses 12:21 which I tagged How to Handle An Attack On God's Church. For the disciples were present on the Day of Pentecost, in one place and on one accord, allowing themselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit, so that they can preach to those who were present the wonderful works of God in their native languages, fulfilling their purpose for existing. It is at this point that the enemy sends an attack on the people of God, when they are accused to being drunk with new wine. Peter responds to this attack in the same way that we should respond when our churches are attacked, Peter responded with boldness. God is not looking for scary Christians or punk Christians, but he is looking instead for bold Christians. Here is the sermon outline:
Thesis: whenever God's Church is under attack, the people of God must respond with boldness
I. Expelled Their Report of the Spirit
-verse 14...men of Judea adn all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words
-verse 15...these men are not drunk as you supposed
II. Explained the Remarkablility of Spirit
-verse 16...but this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel
-verse 17...and in the last days it shall be, God declares that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams
-verse 18...even on my male servants and female servants
-when the Spirit shows up it is remarkable in that the world will not understand what it is when it comes
a. Purpose of the Spirit - uttered through the prophet Joel...the purpose of the Spirit is to be the fulfillment of prophesy
b. Promise of the Spirit - verse 17...the spirit will not discriminate on who it will fall upon
1. Gender - sons and daughters shall prophesy
2. Age - young men shall see visions; old men shall dream dreams
3. Status - male servants and female servants
c. Power of the Spirit - verses 19-20...Peter tells of all of the things that the Spirit will be able to do for us
III. Exposed the Reality of the Spirit
-verse 21...and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved
-Peter exposes the truth of the Gospel story...whoever calls on the name of the Lord, no matter your past, shall receive the gift of salvation
Showing posts with label friday focus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friday focus. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Friday Focus - 11/21/08
For the last couple of weeks, I have endeavored on these Fridays, to write posts that have an emphasis on many of the issues that we as Pastors face in our day to day walk in ministry. I previously dealt with the issue of charging other churches a set fee in order for us to preach there. And I also dealt with the issue of how handle problems with deacons, trustees and other lay leaders in our churches who attempt lead us instead of being led by us. I will say that both issues have garnered some good responses from my fellow bloggers.
However, I received a phone call this past week from a person who's opinion I value tremendously, who had read both of those Friday posts and they gave me some sound, Godly advice that I want to share with all of you.
I wrote those posts with the thought that they were for fellow Pastors and Preachers as we face the various difficulties in ministry. But what my friend explained to me was that not only do Pastors and Preachers read our blogs, but we all have members who read our blogs, and subsequently they read our friend's blogs as well. And when we use our blogs as a vehicle to vent about the problems we may be having in our churches, it may cause our members to think that all we do is complain about them.
I want to share with each of you, that it is a privilege and not a right that God has chosen us to lead his people, and the reality is that we lead the people by permission. They really don't have to listen to the voice of God and follow what we say God is telling us to tell them, and I don't want anybody's members or my own to think that all of them are grouped in with the distinct few that decide to be contrary to our leadership.
I believe that this blog can and will be a blessing to both the body of Christ and the ambassadors of Christ both at the same time. So I have decided to use these Friday Focuses to be an encouragement to my brothers and sisters in the faith and not as a tool to get even with people who have failed to heed the voice of God. My complete goal with these posts was to share some of my pitfalls in ministry and be as transparent as possible so that we all can learn from each other on how to make it in times such as these.
So I ask for both your forgiveness and your patience as I attempt to be faithful to my assignment in being a blessing to you and not blowing off steam. I love each and every one of you and I pray that we will allow even the mistakes that we commit to help us become better Pastors, Preachers, leaders and most of all Christians in these last and evil days.
Until we meet again, may the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face to shine upon you, may he lift his countenance upon you, may he be gracious to you, which is to give you his divine favor, may he grant you his peace and may this peace be with you until we all meet again.
GOD BE PRAISED!!!
However, I received a phone call this past week from a person who's opinion I value tremendously, who had read both of those Friday posts and they gave me some sound, Godly advice that I want to share with all of you.
I wrote those posts with the thought that they were for fellow Pastors and Preachers as we face the various difficulties in ministry. But what my friend explained to me was that not only do Pastors and Preachers read our blogs, but we all have members who read our blogs, and subsequently they read our friend's blogs as well. And when we use our blogs as a vehicle to vent about the problems we may be having in our churches, it may cause our members to think that all we do is complain about them.
I want to share with each of you, that it is a privilege and not a right that God has chosen us to lead his people, and the reality is that we lead the people by permission. They really don't have to listen to the voice of God and follow what we say God is telling us to tell them, and I don't want anybody's members or my own to think that all of them are grouped in with the distinct few that decide to be contrary to our leadership.
I believe that this blog can and will be a blessing to both the body of Christ and the ambassadors of Christ both at the same time. So I have decided to use these Friday Focuses to be an encouragement to my brothers and sisters in the faith and not as a tool to get even with people who have failed to heed the voice of God. My complete goal with these posts was to share some of my pitfalls in ministry and be as transparent as possible so that we all can learn from each other on how to make it in times such as these.
So I ask for both your forgiveness and your patience as I attempt to be faithful to my assignment in being a blessing to you and not blowing off steam. I love each and every one of you and I pray that we will allow even the mistakes that we commit to help us become better Pastors, Preachers, leaders and most of all Christians in these last and evil days.
Until we meet again, may the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face to shine upon you, may he lift his countenance upon you, may he be gracious to you, which is to give you his divine favor, may he grant you his peace and may this peace be with you until we all meet again.
GOD BE PRAISED!!!
Friday, November 14, 2008
Friday Focus - 11/14/08
As I stated on last week that with all of this election stuff being over and our country being ready to move on towards hopefully better days, I want to deal with on Fridays, with some of the issues that deal directly to the heart and minds of Pastors/preachers as we attempt to advance the Kingdom of God here on earth.
Today I want to deal with an issue that many if not all of us can relate to; how do we handle when Deacons, Trustees and other church leaders refuse to follow Pastoral Leadership and attempt to lead Pastors? Why have many of them made it up in their minds that the church needs them more than they need Pastors? Why are many of them so hung up on keeping Pastors in our places?
Well, I can only offer my own personal experiences with this issue as an open window into what I am referring to. My preaching ministry and Pastoral training ground was formulated at The New Hope Baptist Church under the direction of the late Dr. C.E. Thomas and Rev. Joe A. Carter. If there was one thing I knew about the ministry of the New Hope Church was that the servant leadership of the church FOLLOWED the vision and direction of the Pastors without any glimpse of disunity and disruption, and any leader that showed any of those traits were reprimanded not by the Pastors, but by the other servant leaders. They understood what it means to follow Pastoral Leadership. So you can imagine my surprise when I began my first pastorate at the Friendship Baptist Church, Asbury Park, NJ and found out that every church is not the same.
My time at Friendship was filled with argument after argument with my leaders. As a matter of fact, I never had one leadership or church meeting for that fact, that ended any other way but with an argument. The chairman of trustees said to my face during one Mother's Day with guests at our church that the trustees don't follow the Pastor at that church, the chairman of the deacon's board was their pastor. It went so far as they refused to pay my salary for 8 consecutive weeks because I discovered that they were misappropriating church funds and exposed them to the congregation who subsequently did nothing about it. As you can expect, I got my wife and family out of that place quick, fast and in a hurry.
When I got to my present assignment at First Mount Zion, I thought they would be different being as though my immediate predecessor had an earned doctorate degree and was a past moderator, but to my surprise, he allowed the chairman of the deacon's board to run roughshod over his entire tenure there. This same deacon thought that he could do the same to me, and he even had the audacity to tell me that the Lord told him that God sent me to the church so that he could teach me how to be a Pastor. He fought me tooth and nail on every spiritual decision even the vision that God gave me to give to the church. What he didn't realize was that I am as bullheaded as they come, and he left long before I. This entire situation has caused some difficult moments at our church with those who were ready for him to leave against those who were loyal to him because he kept them in power. But I will say this, the Lord has removed virtually every opposition to his vision for this church.
So again, blogging family, let me pose this interrogative, why does this occur and how do we handle this when we are faced with this great dilemma.
Today I want to deal with an issue that many if not all of us can relate to; how do we handle when Deacons, Trustees and other church leaders refuse to follow Pastoral Leadership and attempt to lead Pastors? Why have many of them made it up in their minds that the church needs them more than they need Pastors? Why are many of them so hung up on keeping Pastors in our places?
Well, I can only offer my own personal experiences with this issue as an open window into what I am referring to. My preaching ministry and Pastoral training ground was formulated at The New Hope Baptist Church under the direction of the late Dr. C.E. Thomas and Rev. Joe A. Carter. If there was one thing I knew about the ministry of the New Hope Church was that the servant leadership of the church FOLLOWED the vision and direction of the Pastors without any glimpse of disunity and disruption, and any leader that showed any of those traits were reprimanded not by the Pastors, but by the other servant leaders. They understood what it means to follow Pastoral Leadership. So you can imagine my surprise when I began my first pastorate at the Friendship Baptist Church, Asbury Park, NJ and found out that every church is not the same.
My time at Friendship was filled with argument after argument with my leaders. As a matter of fact, I never had one leadership or church meeting for that fact, that ended any other way but with an argument. The chairman of trustees said to my face during one Mother's Day with guests at our church that the trustees don't follow the Pastor at that church, the chairman of the deacon's board was their pastor. It went so far as they refused to pay my salary for 8 consecutive weeks because I discovered that they were misappropriating church funds and exposed them to the congregation who subsequently did nothing about it. As you can expect, I got my wife and family out of that place quick, fast and in a hurry.
When I got to my present assignment at First Mount Zion, I thought they would be different being as though my immediate predecessor had an earned doctorate degree and was a past moderator, but to my surprise, he allowed the chairman of the deacon's board to run roughshod over his entire tenure there. This same deacon thought that he could do the same to me, and he even had the audacity to tell me that the Lord told him that God sent me to the church so that he could teach me how to be a Pastor. He fought me tooth and nail on every spiritual decision even the vision that God gave me to give to the church. What he didn't realize was that I am as bullheaded as they come, and he left long before I. This entire situation has caused some difficult moments at our church with those who were ready for him to leave against those who were loyal to him because he kept them in power. But I will say this, the Lord has removed virtually every opposition to his vision for this church.
So again, blogging family, let me pose this interrogative, why does this occur and how do we handle this when we are faced with this great dilemma.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Friday Focus
I have decided to use Fridays to write a thought provoking blog post on issues that we all face as Pastors that are entrenched in ministry. We spend a lot of time putting our sermon outlines and our political ideologies and vacations on our blog, but I really felt the heavy burden of dealing with things that will affect us as Pastor/Preachers in this present age.
Today, I would like to broach the topic of preachers who put a price tag on the Gospel. We live in a day and age where it has become common practice for preachers, when they receive invitations to stand in another Pastor's pulpit, to place a dollar figure on his time of preaching. Many of them will send correspondence through their respective secretaries that inform the inviting church of the "needs" that the Pastor must have met before he will come to minister at the church. Some of them even go as far to confront the Pastor and officers of the church if they come short of what they think they should receive.
Now I need to state up front that I truly believe in the Word of God which says that a laborer is worthy of its hire, and he who preaches the Gospel shall live off the Gospel, and those who laborer over the word is worth double honor. Churches ought to take care of the preacher/pastor without reservation. But what I am talking about is this incessant need to put a price tag on something that God has given us freely. I am referring to a preacher requesting an enormous amount of money and that Pastor emptying out his church's treasury to pay this enormous amount to the Pastor.
Some years ago, while I served at the New Hope Baptist Church, Newark, NJ, a well-known female preacher was called by our Women's Day committee to preach the service for that year. Her staff informed us that she needed a few days to pray over the invitation. But when she returned the call, she stated that she took those few days to perform some research on our church in which she discovered that our church was one of the affluent churches in this area. So she stated to us that her fee to come and preach our Women's Day service was 250,000. My pastor was appalled and he told her thanks but no thanks.
My opinion is that we as preachers are really missing a golden opportunity to change the culture of our profession. Forever, preachers have been labeled as pimps, thieves and other hideous names, and when we come to pillage a church for their money, we are helping to perpetuate this negative connotation of what and who a preacher really is. God said that our gifts will make room for us and as long as we take care of his business, he will take good care of our business. The gift of any preacher is not for sale. We need to learn that what the Lord has given us to share with this world so that sinners will find rest in the arms of Jesus Christ, not to make ourselves feel like we are God's gift to the world and like He needs us. Let me suggest to you that God doesn't need us for anything. Gos does not have to allow us to use our gifts, but we are privileged to be allowed to stand as imperfect people before other imperfect people to deliver the perfect Word of God. And when you recognize this, how can we have the audacity to put price tags on the Gospel.
Now I totally understand why many of our brethren and sisters of the faith have undertaken this objective, far too long, we have labored over the Word all week long in order to have our lessons correct. When we mount the pulpit on Sunday, we put our all into the act of delivering the message to a lost world, and we don't receive enough money to put gas in the car or get our clothes clean. I get that! But what I have discovered is that we serve a great God who is able to supply each and every need that we have as a reward for our faithfulness to him with our service.
There have been times in my ministry where I have traveled 860 miles to preach and received nothing from the church I preached at and they have thousands of dollars in the bank, and while on that same trip, preached for another church and received the whole sum of $91 from a good church. Never did I want to result to requesting an amount before or after those incidents, because I do believe in the rewarding plan of God. My question to you all is, when Pastors make demands on the people for the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has that helped or hindered the perception of us in the eyes of the people of God.
Today, I would like to broach the topic of preachers who put a price tag on the Gospel. We live in a day and age where it has become common practice for preachers, when they receive invitations to stand in another Pastor's pulpit, to place a dollar figure on his time of preaching. Many of them will send correspondence through their respective secretaries that inform the inviting church of the "needs" that the Pastor must have met before he will come to minister at the church. Some of them even go as far to confront the Pastor and officers of the church if they come short of what they think they should receive.
Now I need to state up front that I truly believe in the Word of God which says that a laborer is worthy of its hire, and he who preaches the Gospel shall live off the Gospel, and those who laborer over the word is worth double honor. Churches ought to take care of the preacher/pastor without reservation. But what I am talking about is this incessant need to put a price tag on something that God has given us freely. I am referring to a preacher requesting an enormous amount of money and that Pastor emptying out his church's treasury to pay this enormous amount to the Pastor.
Some years ago, while I served at the New Hope Baptist Church, Newark, NJ, a well-known female preacher was called by our Women's Day committee to preach the service for that year. Her staff informed us that she needed a few days to pray over the invitation. But when she returned the call, she stated that she took those few days to perform some research on our church in which she discovered that our church was one of the affluent churches in this area. So she stated to us that her fee to come and preach our Women's Day service was 250,000. My pastor was appalled and he told her thanks but no thanks.
My opinion is that we as preachers are really missing a golden opportunity to change the culture of our profession. Forever, preachers have been labeled as pimps, thieves and other hideous names, and when we come to pillage a church for their money, we are helping to perpetuate this negative connotation of what and who a preacher really is. God said that our gifts will make room for us and as long as we take care of his business, he will take good care of our business. The gift of any preacher is not for sale. We need to learn that what the Lord has given us to share with this world so that sinners will find rest in the arms of Jesus Christ, not to make ourselves feel like we are God's gift to the world and like He needs us. Let me suggest to you that God doesn't need us for anything. Gos does not have to allow us to use our gifts, but we are privileged to be allowed to stand as imperfect people before other imperfect people to deliver the perfect Word of God. And when you recognize this, how can we have the audacity to put price tags on the Gospel.
Now I totally understand why many of our brethren and sisters of the faith have undertaken this objective, far too long, we have labored over the Word all week long in order to have our lessons correct. When we mount the pulpit on Sunday, we put our all into the act of delivering the message to a lost world, and we don't receive enough money to put gas in the car or get our clothes clean. I get that! But what I have discovered is that we serve a great God who is able to supply each and every need that we have as a reward for our faithfulness to him with our service.
There have been times in my ministry where I have traveled 860 miles to preach and received nothing from the church I preached at and they have thousands of dollars in the bank, and while on that same trip, preached for another church and received the whole sum of $91 from a good church. Never did I want to result to requesting an amount before or after those incidents, because I do believe in the rewarding plan of God. My question to you all is, when Pastors make demands on the people for the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has that helped or hindered the perception of us in the eyes of the people of God.
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