Conference Day 2…More Ed Stetzer

• First the picture is of my wife Lisa who is celebrating her birthday today!
• 1 Peter 4:8-10
• 1.  ALL have gifts.
  • True Christianity isn’t knowing more minutia, it’s serving others.
  • We are all called to ministry at the moment of conversion.
  • If you end up with more spectators than servants in your church something is wrong.  We need to encourage people to get up off their blessed assurance and get to work for God.
  • A bad economy is good for churches because instead of finding more paid professionals to do the work of the ministry, we instead do it the biblical way and have people volunteer.
  • Many times we take the super great volunteers and start paying them but that only hinders the mission of God because it again tells the church that ministry is only for people who get paid.
• 2.  God intends all to use their gifts.
  • Our job is to be good managers of all that God has given us including our gifts.
  • We lead our people into sin when we teach people to know but not do the Bible.
  • Too many churches don’t look like a body, but instead a pile of dismembered parts acting dysfunctionally like our government.
  • The church needs to be more than just a show where we simply come to be a spectator…it needs to be a group that together are on mission to change their community for Christ.
  • The people are not to just pray, pay and get out of the way.
• 3. For which He empowers us.
  • We have created a culture where our people are more dependent on the pastor than they are on God.  (Codependency)
  • In a codependent church relationship the people need the pastor (hospital visits, teach me the bible, etc) and pastors get their identity from it (I’m the hero, I met their needs, I rescued them, etc) but eventually we resent them because they get mad when we’re not there for them and we realize that nobody is doing ministry but us.
  • We need to unleash the Susan Boyle’s of the world to use their talents if they don’t look the part.
• 4.  To bring God glory.
  • Ephesians 4:11-13
  • When the church becomes a Sunday only performance, then it looks like only a few get the credit instead of God.
  • Churches should look like airports.  Planes come in for a short time to get fueled up but then they leave to do what they are designed to do.
  • Sunday’s should be a place where your people come in to get re-fueled so they can go out and be on mission.
  • Pastors stop doing the ministry.  If people keep insisting then tell them, “Let me teach you how to do that”.

“There are more verses you can find in the bible that would point to you having a concubine than forming a denomination”.  Funniest line Ed had today.  He’s not against denominations he just wanted to make sure we don’t get bogged down in bureaucracy.

3 questions to ask:

1.  Am I looking for the gifting in people?
2.  Am I putting people into the roles they were created for?
3.  Am I willing to stop doing something so someone else can?