In dedication to the 8.8.08 Olympics this post marks the 800th here at Kingdom Living. I cannot wait to see the opening ceremony and especially the track and field competition. When I ran track in college my goal was always to beat the Olympic women’s times. I almost always did…for whatever that is worth.

Today I noticed a rash of websites linking to me. I click on them and find that someone named Scot is using a tool called the Easy Blog Creator Pro. This thing has a bot that takes your content and posts it verbatim to websites like Scot’s. It basically generates hordes of free content for them to get picked up by search engines like google in hopes that people will come to their website and click on web advertising. This is a money making scheme. In moments you can slap down some cash and have an instant empire of free content that is fully in sight of search engines. I went to the easy blog creator website and saw just how commercial this idea is and just how much of an abuse it is as well.

I really wouldn’t care and I normally don’t mind if people take anything they want from here. But I do object to people using my content as a money making scheme. Have any of you run into anything similar?

“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.  I do not accept praise from men, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.” - John 5:39-42

Is it possible to study the Bible and come away less loving than before? I think so. How is that possible? It all beings with the reason why you decide to study the Bible. If you study the Bible to be able to hammer and smash other people’s doctrine and beliefs and to find a way for things to be exactly how you think they should be then it shouldn’t be a surprise when that is exactly what your study produces within you. But if you study the Bible to be more godly and more Christ-like should it be surprising when we find ourselves transformed into more loving, caring, and gentle people than ever before? It all depends on where you are starting from and what your intentions are.

I am not saying we shouldn’t have discussions about things we disagree on. I am saying that when two disagreeing parties are both looking at scripture with the aim of submitting to scripture (not to prooftexting scripture but to what scripture is saying in context) then things are much more amiable and even though we might disagree both will walk away better for having had the conversation.

Thanks to Andrew Jones for mentioning this fascinating search tool by google. It allows you to find out where terms are searched for the most around the world and over various periods of time. This would allow you to look for trends and use of terminology to see when and where it spreads based on what people in those regions google and in what years. It even gives you a nifty world map to show you search density by color.

No one really ever tells you how to be an effective associate minister. The preaching minister is normally so much more visible that going into ministry people usually have in mind what that role is like. The youth minister’s role is usually pretty narrow and well defined. Often people want to be a youth minister because they had a good healthy youth minister at some point in their past. How many people do you know want to go into ministry to because they had a wonderful associate minister role model growing up? It is not that it is not a good role to be in, trust me I feel like I am doing exactly what God wants me to be doing. These roles are typically not as visible partly because they are only held is larger churches and do not have a “one size fits all” job description. Different churches have different needs. Different elderships have different vision for their congregations. Because of that the role of an associate minister is not always as cut and dry as other ministry positions.

The Interview:
1) Make sure that expectations and the job description are clearly laid out. The elders and congregation need to know exactly what they want. Along with that they need to be clear about which expectations are rigid and which are more flexible. My elders did a wonderful job about having in mind exactly what they thought the congregation needed most. That is not something to figure out in the interview. It should have already been planned out, thought about, and prayed about in advance of the interview.

2) Know who came before you, what they did, and how they were received. It is always helpful to learn the history of the position in order to know what people will expect. You may find the official initial expectations differ from the actual expectations for the role.

3) Interviews are a two-way street. Have questions prepared in advance. Remember these elders are going to be the elders for you and your family and not just an employer. It is essential that you feel you and your family fit with the congregation, with the other ministers, and with the eldership.

Building Rapport:

Once you are hired it is very important that you immediately build rapport with the congregation. This takes  at least a year although it often feels like it happens much quicker than that. After our first six months at Northwest if felt like we were surrounded by family and that we had been here forever. Your role probably has something to do with helping the members of the congregation become mature disciples in one way shape or form (through education, involvement, small groups, etc). It is impossible for them to follow your lead if they don’t know that you love them and have their best interest at heart.

1) Cards, emails, phone calls, and conversations all come together to let people know you are interested in them. If you they hear you talk about is yourself chances are the doors for influencing them for God are not fully open yet.

2) Love people’s children. People need to see that what is most important to them is also important to you. Who/what is more important than someone’s child? Sporting events and plays are not just for youth and children’s ministers.

3) Treat people like family. I cannot tell you how many times when helping someone at church I say to them “We are all family here.”

4) Learn the picture directory. Knowing names is so important.

Tracking Your Job Description:

1) Make sure you know exactly which areas you are expected to be involved in and have readily identifiable ways that things are regularly being accomplished in each of those areas. What you do should not be a mystery to everyone. Results can take time but they should happen eventually and should be evident that the body is benefiting from your ministry.

2) Equip others to get the job done. Associate ministry can feel like plate spinning. As soon as three or four plate start spinning well one hits the floor. Because of this it is important that you are an equipper of others. This also ensures that some day when/if you ever go to another congregation that things will be left in good hands when you leave for the period of transition.

3) Have regularly scheduled times of accountability with your elders to make sure you are meeting their expectations.

Practice What You Preach:

I was speaking with a minister I know who runs a church’s small group ministry. I asked him which group he was a part of. He told me he didn’t go to a group on Sunday nights. That floored me! You are the model whether you like it or not. If your plea to the church is a goal of 90% of members in a small group make sure you are there.

Modeling is so important when it comes to associate/non-preaching ministries. It is important for preachers too but even more so for associate ministers. The main thing people see a preacher doing is preaching. Modeling that is not very helpful to most Christians as not many of them are going to find themselves delivering a 30 minute monologue about God or Christ to a room full of people in their average week. Associate ministers have their hands in so many different things that it is important that you model well what you expect of others.

Have Good Communication:

Good communication is KEY for any ministry to grow. There are so many ways to communicate what is going on now that there is no excuse for poor communication. The biggest cause for poor communication is not a lack of resources or methods for getting the information out. The biggest cause is lack of preparation. Be on the ball, be early, have things done well in advance so you can cast a vision for the future (more than next week!). If you are constantly getting slammed by what is happening tomorrow, how can you plan for next year?

Vision is Crucial:

Ministries change. That is the nature of things. Ministries that don’t flex some will eventually grow stale and possibly die. If you don’t provide a structured approach to making that change productive and relevant to the needs and direction of the congregation one to five years from now, chances are the changes will be unplanned, unproductive, and probably negative rather than positive. Have a vision and start taking steps toward that vision. Be intentional.

With Phil Sanders, Matthew Morine, and this blog discussing Emerging Church and Churches of Christ it seems there are A LOT of misconceptions out there. C Michael Patton clears up a lot of things in his most recent post at Parchment and Pen. I would highly suggest anyone wanting to know more about Emerging/Emergent church to read his post. It is very informed and informative. It also clears up a lot of misconceptions. He describes different strains of it, how and why it is not one size fits all, how it is more of a cultural phenomenon that is impacting views on Christianity rather than a particular church, and much more. Very helpful. Thank you Michael Patton!

The new header reflects a desire to put more nuts and bolts of ministry and life as a Christian here at Kingdom Living.

Any copyright experts out there? Nooma/Zondervan marketing people have asked that I remove a previous post that linked to Nooma study guides online. They sent me a very polite email asking that I remove this material from my website. The only problem is, this material is not on my website. It is on multiple websites including nooma’s own website in pdf form. I just organized a list of links to what others had uploaded. So the post has been removed but now I am really wondering for future reference how copyright works with links.

Anyone know if it Is copyright infringement to link to what someone else makes public?

With McLaren writing a book called “Everything Must Change” it is only fitting he endorses the candidate whose focus has been change, change, and more change. Unfortunately I am afraid Obama is more about changing what he needs to in order to get money for his campaign and to get elected and not real change in Washington. He changed on campaign finance and is now changing on drilling. Initially he said we should all get tune ups. I guess he is out of touch with real Americans enough that he doesn’t even know that today’s cars don’t require tune ups. This is also the guy who said if his daughter got pregnant he wouldn’t want her to have to suffer for that “mistake” and would support her right to get an abortion. Sadly enough I cannot say McCain is really a whole lot better.

Get ready for a big helping of change.

When I was a student at Harding University I took a class in social psychology. Myself, Sherri Scharff, and Rachel Crum did a research project on the effects of confidence on how credible a speaker was perceived to be by an audience. We wrote two speeches about the history of psychology. One speech had 100% accurate facts. The other speech was full of errors (wrong names, wrong dates, mixed up theories, etc). I presented these two speeches to two different college speech classes. The speech with 100% accurate facts was presented with lots of vocalized pauses, zero eye contact, monotone, and just all together very poorly presented…but correct! The speech with the errors was presented as flawlessly and confidently as I knew how…yet it was totally incorrect!

Guess which speech was thought to be more credible and even more factual? The speech that was 100% incorrect. Amazing. When ran statistics on it and found highly significant results that favored the confidently presented speech as being perceived as more factual than the bumbled up speech. Do you find that surprising?