Introduction to the resource: “Cultivating Your 1st Love”

“The most important thing about us, and the single greatest factor that determines our fruitfulness as leaders, is the quality of our heart relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Dr Bill Bright used to say: “It’s possible that the greatest threat to our walk with God can be our ministry for God.” We must never allow our joy and desire for the ministry to become more important than our joy and desire for Jesus Christ.

The above quotes are taken from the following study on “Cultivating your first love.”  I remember hearing Dr Bright, the founding president of Campus Crusade for Christ, say hundreds of times, “please pray that I don’t leave my first love.”  He understood that the key to being usable to God was maintaining our ‘first love’ relationship with Him.

This study is will help to guide you through a time of reflection & evaluation concerning your love relationship with Him  I hope that you will come away from your time in the Word with Him with some concrete plans of how you can cultivate your 1st love relationship with Jesus.

Note: Please ignore the article attached to this study.  Because of the length of the study and especially the length of the article, I will blog about the article next week.  This is such good material, that I don’t want you to rush through both in one week.

Introduction to Pitfalls of a leader

This week’s contribution on the theme of developing your spiritual base is a collection of quotes from the book on Spiritual Leadership by Henry & Richard Blackaby, ‘Pitfalls of a leader’.  It is a great outline for reflection on our character and our attitudes as leaders of spiritual movements, whether in a church or on campus. 

One of the quotes from the book that really stood out to me is: "Leaders who surrender their positive attitude have resigned themselves to be mediocre leaders at best.”   I think this list of quotes is a great place to start in reflecting on your personal attitude.  As a leader, all that is within you will become visible sooner or later, so I would encourage you to take regular times apart with the Lord to do an assessment of your heart and relationship with God.

I would encourage you to set aside a significant portion of time to spend with the Lord reflecting on these thoughts and questions (there are a set of good questions at the end) and spend some time meditating on the passages listed at the end.  I know I need to do this myself.  Let’s pray for one another that we would  "nurture a strong relationship with almighty God which would allow us the freedom to follow our God-given convictions and to bring glory to God." 

Even "good things" become "god things" (when we lose our focus of Christ)

from a blog by Grant Kaul

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You.              Psalm 63:3

  

          What do you actually need to really be happy?  Is it something you think you are missing and absolutely need?  Or is it something you have that you simply cannot live without?  Fill in the blank for what is truly needed for happiness for you:  a spouse, a family that is "doing well" and loves you a lot, popularity, success at school, making a lot of money at work, to look a particular way, or some earthly pleasure.

          When we are honest with ourselves, these good things can be the very things that take God's place in our lives.  Make no mistake; we are really glad that Jesus had paid for our sins.  We believe in Him.  The problem, however, is that we have an underdeveloped understanding of the gospel.  Jesus is not a mere ticket into heaven or our entrance pass into whatever earthly pursuits we want.  The Gospel of Jesus is the good news that by faith we are united eternally with Him who is Savior, Lord, and our Life.  

          The human heart has a habit of making idols out of everything - from what we have to what we want.  We even can obsess over what we hate or what hurts.   The byproducts of a misdirected heart are all too familiar, namely fear and anxiety.  Stop!  We must move from being passive to proactive, and point our souls back to Him who has created us and loves us.  To fail to do so is to fall short of all we have in Christ.    

          God certainly gives us good things to enjoy in life (1 Tim. 6:17).  But to enjoy the many good things He gives and to persevere, with grace, the difficulties we face, we must learn to daily find our joy in Christ (Phil. 3:1).  I have found that ongoing thankfulness and prayerful dependence are life-giving means of finding my identity, security, peace and power in Christ alone - especially when my heart wants to try to enjoy or endure life apart from God.  After all, even "good things" become "god things" when we lose our focus of Christ.

Introduction to ‘Developing your spiritual base’ article

I have been involved in Christian ministry for a long time.  I have seen people serving God thrive and faithfully serve Him to the end of their lives.  I have also seen people who seem to have it all together for God on the outside, but later on in ministry they either stop serving the Lord or fall into some secret sin because they have neglected to develop a vitally deep connection with God.

In the next couple of months I want to focus on the internal life of a leader.  I will send out a few articles that I have collected about the internal lives of leaders that I wanted to share with you.  I will also send out resources from a series called ‘Leader Development’.  

 Please take some time to read this week's article, Developing Your Spiritual Base, as well as of the upcoming articles in an attitude of prayer and personal reflection, asking the Lord to build in you a deep, deep connection to Him.  I am praying for you in this area.  Please pray for me as well.

Thoughts on the value of evaluation

I love words!  And so I was intrigued by the roots found in the following Russian words:

цена                      ценить                 оценка

cost                        value                     evaluation

I looked up each word to find out what they had in common with each other:

to value:  Recognize a certain value; the value of something.

Value:  getting a fair return for the time and effort you spend in doing something.

to evaluate:  To examine and judge carefully; to make an appraisal of the value of something.  Evaluation is the act of considering, judging and deciding on something that has been made or done. 

Evaluation: the idea is that it is not just what was done well or not well, but it is focused on determining the value of what was done.

cost: The price paid to acquire, produce, accomplish, or maintain anything.

Cost:  we pay a price – whether to pay for something with money (to buy materials, rent facilities, etc.), with time or with focus of energy.

Everything we do in ministry has a cost.  We want to get the most value for what we ‘spend’ – “to get our money’s worth” (actual money or time, effect/results, manpower, energy, focus, reputation).  This would be considered wise stewardship! 

At the end of the school year I usually suggest to you to spend some time in reflective evaluation of the ministry things you did during the past year.  The evaluation times I have been a part of in the past have usually been more focused on evaluating whether or not we did each thing well (particular events, Bible study topics, focus, plans, etc).  I am challenged by how the ideas that цена, ценить and оценка (cost, value and evaluation) have redirected my understanding of evaluation.  Were the things we did worth the cost?  This is one of the goals of evaluation. 

Were the events and activities you were involved in and was the focus of this past year in ministry worth the cost that you paid?  Did you get the most value out of what you did as you joined in with God in His mission on your campus?

Here are some suggested questions for your time of evaluating the value and cost of your ministry foci and strategies:  (You don’t have to answer every question;  just choose the ones that pertain to your ministry this year.)

1.       Were the things we did to initiate with and gather new people this year effective?  Were those activities worth the cost we paid?

2.       Were our events and/or small group Bible studies effective in accomplishing our goals?

3.       Were the evangelistic events we did effective in giving many an opportunity to hear the gospel message?  Are they worth doing again next year?

4.       Did we cover important, foundational material in our small group Bible studies?  Was the material transferable so that untrained students could lead the studies after sitting through them just once?

5.       How did we do with follow-up of people who indicated interest in spiritual things?

6.       Were we able to train students in evangelism? How did we do in sharing the gospel on a regular basis with students on campus?

7.       Did we gather together regularly to pray for our campus ministry?  What was the ‘cost’ of that?  Did everyone see the value of spending time in prayer?  Or, did we realize that we spent a lot of time doing the ministry, but not much time asking God to work?

8.       Did we do a good job at personally inviting people to our events?  How did we do with advertisement?  How did we do in motivating people to come to our events?  Did we have enough people at our events to justify the amount of money, time, effort, etc. spent?  What events provided a good return for our expenditure?  What events were not ‘profitable’?  Why/Why not?  Are they worth doing another time if we make adjustments, or are they not worth trying it again?

9.       How is the funding for our ministry?  Are there some churches and some individuals who helped with regular gifts?  What do we need to do to communicate our gratitude for their gifts?

10.   How was our overall strategic plan for the year?  Did we follow it?  If not, why not?  How did it help us stay on track?  What did we learn from the Strategic Planning Process that will help us do better next year?

11.   Where did God show up?  How did He surprise us?  What did we learn about Him as we trusted Him to lead us and work through us this year?

12.   What did we learn about ourselves, about working together as a team, about the Spirit-filled life and about ministry to students this year?

13.   Is there any unresolved conflict that we need to take care of?  What is the cost of not taking care of these relational issues?

Be honest as you answer these questions because they will serve to help you establish a ministry that is not only multiplying, evangelistic, and transferable, but reflective of good stewardship of the resources the Lord has given you.