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How Ricky Gervais Became an Atheist

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:15:00 +0000

There was an interesting article in Best Life Magazine written by Ricky Gervais the creator of the wildly successful comedy, The Office, about how he became an atheist. Here is an excerpt:

(8 year old Ricky is drawing a picture of Jesus when his older brother walks into the room...)

...there I was, happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, “Why do you believe in God?” Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. “Bob,” she said, in a tone that I knew meant “shut up.” Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong, it didn’t matter what people said.

Oh…hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour, I was an atheist.

This story has come to mind quite a bit since I read it several months ago and I have used it several times to make a point in conversations. My point that I make is this - Making people feel bad for asking questions about their faith is destructive. There is this underlying fear in some people that Christianity really isn't true, that if they look at it too closely, it will fall apart. If it is true, then it is durable as well and will stand up to our questioning. Oliver Wendell Holmes said it best when he said, "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."

If it really is true then we shouldn't be afraid of questions. That fear is far more destructive than any question.

Confidence Without Competence

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:04:00 +0000

Awesome quote from Mark Goulston's blog on Confidence and competence.

Confidence without competence is arrogance.
And you won’t fool anyone with an ounce of discernment.
Competence is the ability (skills) and capacity (resources)
to produce a positive measurable result
based upon many instances (vs. being a one trick pony)
of having done it.

Cletus Take the Reel

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:17:00 +0000

Write your own Freakonomics

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:24:00 +0000

I am a sucker for books like Blink, The Tipping Point, and Freakonomics. If you are too, you should check out this hilarious article from Wired magazine on how to write your own "Big Idea book."

First, pick a random object to serve as a cryptic representation of your Big Idea (like this peanut for example), then follow the three steps in the article.

Look for my book A Community of Multitudes - The New Radical Force of Humanity coming soon thanks to Wired's "Big Idea Book Generator!"

The name is intriguing enough to make me want to buy it.

A Year of Living Biblically

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:18:00 +0000

I am reading a book right now called A Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs. He is a writer for Esquire magazine and this is a great book. He starts out his "year of living biblically" by reading the Bible for about 5 hours a day (which is no problem for him) and as he reads it, he writes down anything resembling a rule or commandment and then tries to keep all of them (over 700 according to his count) for a year. He hires a shatnez inspector that analysis his clothing fibers under a microscope to make sure that he doesn't inadvertently wear wool and linen mixed together. He goes on several field trips as a part of his experiment. I am only about 80 pages (of about 380) into this book, but I've already read about his trip to Amish country and his trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. He examines and puzzles at the Jewish and Christian subcultures without mocking or disrespecting them. I do know from watching this video, that he wasn't able to spend a whole year without breaking any of the commandments, but after his experiment he decided to keep many of the practices that he adopted during that time. Read or listen to an excerpt from the book here.

Relevance (by itself) isn't a big enough goal.

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:57:00 +0000

Some thoughts that have been whirling around my head recently regarding relevance and the church. I am inspired to write about them today because of a post called "The Future of the Church" by Craig Groeschel over on the Swerve Blog.

Relevance is not a goal for a church. It is a tool to help you get to the goal. The goal is transformation - people who are far from Christ beginning a relationship with Him, then growing, and ultimately bringing others to Him who go through that same process. The goal is discipleship, not relevance. When relevance becomes the goal of the church, we have big problems.

Ed Stetzer speaks to this topic better than I can. Check out this article from SermonCentral.com. I think the first time I heard Ed's take on relevance was on a podcast from the Exponential Conference 2007. Check out Jon Ferguson's notes from this talk - 10 ways to know that relevance has become your goal and not just a tool.

Not only is relevance not a big enough goal, but relevance is relative as well. It's a moving target. Adapting our approach in sharing the Gospel will look different depending on where you are. If we are truly looking at our culture with the perspective of a missionary, then what is relevant in one place may be irrelevant somewhere else. In the podcast referenced above, Ed Stetzer talks about pastors who get "community lust and demographic envy" and try to plant a church that is adapted to work in urban Seattle even if they are in rural Mississippi. Relevance is a function of our specific culture.

Relevance is essential in reaching the goal, but it isn't the goal.

Master Storytellers – Ralph Winter on Christ and Film

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:34:00 +0000

This post is late in coming. I attended this lecture that was given as a part of the Faith Film and Philosophy lecture series at Whitworth University on September 26th. Ralph Winter, the producer of the Fantastic 4 movies, Star Treks 4-6, and The X-Men movies, gave a compelling talk about the power of story and becoming better storytellers through film.

Winter made an early point to talk about the necessity of darkness in some stories. Christians try to sanitize things too much. Many of our biblical stories are just packed with darkness and carnage. The Bible doesn’t try to clean that up. It is important from an accuracy perspective, but also from a storytelling perspective. Darkness is intriguing. Jesus was a master storyteller and many of the stories that Jesus told were very dark. The parable of the prodigal son is a great example. It is a dark story. No one gets what they deserve. The loose ends don’t all get tied up. Whatever happened to the older brother? Did he ever forgive the younger brother? Even the name is dark. It isn’t the “parable of the loving father.” It is the “parable of the prodigal son.”

Christians tend to not like the fact that there is darkness in stories so they try to clean them up. Winter believed that the movie “the Nativity” didn’t do as well as everyone hoped because they took all of the darkness away from the story. They glossed over things like the murder of all of the infants in Bethlehem. He said that they told the story right down the middle. Because they were trying to appeal to the Christian audience they sanded away any roughness so as not to offend anyone, but they didn’t grab anyone either. When we rob stories of their darkness we end up with little more than “pious trash.”

Christianity is not just about being nice.

How do we become master storytellers then as churches and as Christians? The rest of Winter’s talk attempted to answer this question. Winter talked about the people who bring him scripts. His big question is always are they moved by their story? We have to tell stories that move us. If we aren’t moved, then why would we expect anyone else to be moved?

Film is a powerful medium. Winter called filmmakers the teaching pastors of the next generation and called movies the new church services. My side-note here, I don’t think he was saying that this is a good thing; it is simply a reflection on the state of the culture. Filmmakers have access to people today the way churches used to.

Because of the effectiveness of film in connecting with our culture, Winter talked about resourcing people to tell stories through film. He talked about missions and how many missionaries are putting work into making a difference with the type of things that are all over the front page of the paper, such as work with AIDS orphans or working in war torn parts of the world. He suggested putting cameras in the hands of our missionaries or sending film teams down to the countries where our missionaries are serving. Instead of reading a prayer letter from a missionary we could show a 5 minute short film showing what our missionaries are up to. This would be much more effective at connecting with people and helping them have a heart for missions.

Winter lamented the lack of Christians in the documentary film world. There have been several culture impacting documentaries made recently by Michael Moore and, of course, the movie that changed the fast food industry, Supersize Me by Morgan Spurlock. Why isn’t there a compelling Christian voice in the world of documentaries?

Winter recently started a company Thomas Winter Cooke that makes really creative and well produced commercials. They are working with a really talented group of directors and doing some great work. He showed us two examples of what they have done so far.

Winter believes that filmmakers are called to raise questions more than provide answers. The church needs to be there with the answers to the questions raised by film.

Followers of Christ should be the most compelling storytellers since our story is the most important one that ever will be told.

Relevant Links:
Ralph Winter is working on a film adaptation of Screwtape Letters!
Whitworth's College Newspaper Article about the lecture
Great Article by Willow Creek on Ralph Winter

The Ride Back to Beersheeba

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:18:00 +0000

Then Abraham tied Issac up and laid him on the alter over the wood. And Abraham took the knife and lifted it up to kill his son as a sacrifice to the Lord. At that moment the angel of the Lord shouted to him from Heaven, “Abraham! Lay down the knife”… Then they returned to Beersheba. - Genesis 2:2

How about some ice cream, Isaac? No? Are you sure? I’ll tell you what, I’ll get us some ice cream Want some ice cream? I’ll get us some ice cream.

Wow, there’s nothing like camping! Cooking your own lamb, building your own prye… and no women! Just a couple of guys in the woods, lighting fires, doing stuff and keeping it between themselves! Speaking of which, do you ever notice how your mother sometimes gets ideas? I mean, she raised you and I love her, but she’s a very nervous person. All I’m saying is sometimes it’s alright not to tell her about certain things. Like guy things.

Wow, I just noticed that you have huge muscles! You’re really getting strong! When did you get so big and strong? Soon you’ll be a real strong guy!

Let me explain something to you. Sometimes grownups have to do grownup stuff that children don’t understand. I think there’s an ice cream place coming up. Like, what happened on top of the mountain? Do you remember? Of course you… of course. Anyway, that was a thing for grownups.

How about some Rocky Road? Chocolate? I’d get you some strawberry, but hey, your name’s Isaac not Isaac Marie right? Ha! Seriously though, if you want strawberry I’ll get it for you. I’ll get you whatever you want.

So let’s rehearse. I’ll be your mother. “Isaac, how was your trip up the mountain?” Okay, then you would say something like, “Pretty normal.” That’s not too hard right?

We’re almost home. Listen, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but your mother is very sick. She’s sick Isaac. And the slightest shock might kill her. Hey there she is, waving at us. Hi, Sarah, we’re back! Put a couple lambs on the spit - you’ve got a couple hungry lumberjacks on your hands. Ha ha. She’s very ill Isaac. Very ill. Wow, camping.

From Ant Farm by Simon Rich

Why Men Hate Going to Church - David Murrow

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 08 May 2007 17:13:00 +0000

A few weeks back (April 16th) I was privileged to be able to attend a Men's Ministry Forum put on by Outdoor Connection Ministries an organization that helps churches put men's ministries together. The special guest was David Murrow of Church for Men author of the book Why Men Hate Going to Church. David's talk was great. Here are some notes that I took during his presentation.

He started out by showing a slide listing two columns of attributes. On one side were words like strong, hard worker, and focused. On the other side were words like caring, loving, and gentle. Murrow asked us to look at both columns and tell him which column we thought best described the characteristics of Jesus Christ. Most people answered the caring-loving-gentle column. Murrow confessed that he had gotten the two columns from chapter one of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. One column described men and the other column (the one that everyone selected) described women (and apparently Jesus).

Murrow said that in order for men to be involved in church, they feel that they must change 80% of who they are. Murrow shared a quote by W. Edwards Deming, "The system you have is perfectly designed to produce the results you are getting." So what results are the Church getting right now when it comes to engaging men at church?

There are 11-13 million more women in church than men
1/4 of all married church-going women go to church without their husbands
90% of boys abandon church by the age of 20
4% of single men aged 18-34 go to church
10% of churches have an ongoing men's ministry

(I wasn't able to get the sources for any of these statistics - if you are going to use them, please look them up before you do!)

In mainline churches the gender gap is as high as 66% female and 33% male. There aren't similar gender gaps in any other major world religion. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism have nothing like the gender gap that exists in Christianity. Islam is certainly not experiencing this disparity. In the US, mosque attendance is overwhelmingly male. The early church didn't experience this kind of gender gap. It was a movement of fisherman that dropped their nets and followed Jesus. Murrow added, "we can't even get men to drop their remotes for 90 minutes to come to church."

Murrow shared some things that we must keep in mind in building our churches to make sure that they are men friendly. Women tend to have the edge on men in these areas:

Reading - Many Sunday School classes involve taking turns reading passages of scripture. Many men have trouble reading. Men are diagnosed with reading disorders at 4 times the rate of women.
Expressing ideas - Women tend to be more able to express ideas than men. Research has shown that women speak 20,000-25,000 words per day and men only speak 7,000-10,000 words per day.
Finger dexterity - Women are generally better at turning those thin Bible pages than men are.
Bible Knowledge - Women are 29% more likely to read the Bible than men and 70% of all Christian books are bought by women.
Socializing - Again a generalization that tends to be true is that men are not as good at socializing as women are.
Hugging - Men generally aren't comfortable in "hugging churches." Men tend to have more personal space issues than women.
Singing - Murrow added that contemporary worship may be more men friendly because they can sing and not be self-conscious of their voices as they are drowned out by the drums and guitars.
Showing Emotion - Women have less barriers to this than men do. Men are taught from an early age not to show emotion.
Holding Hands - Again a personal space issue.
Sitting still - Men have 10 times the testosterone level that women do and it is at its highest level in the morning (when we tend to have worship services).
Attention span - The average US male attention span is 6-8 minutes. Women have an average attention span of around 20 minutes. However, men are more deeply focused for those 6-8 minutes than women are for their 20 minutes.

If church sometimes operates as a system that is designed for women to win and men to lose, when does the losing begin? Murrow believes that it begins when men are boys in Sunday School. Sunday School is a system that values girls over boys. For all of the reasons already listed above, it is hard for boys to win. Many churches also show children images of Jesus that all but guarantee that boys will lose interest in Jesus. We show images of Jesus with children or Jesus with lambs. Jesus didn't spend a great deal of time with children or lambs, but there seems to be overly abundant artistic evidence that He did. Murrow asked the question, why would the disciples have gotten rebuked by Jesus for trying to keep the little children away from Jesus if it was Jesus custom to spend time with children. This was towards the end of His ministry. Wouldn't the disciples have known that Jesus liked to spend time with children by then? Apparently then it wasn't a common occurance for Jesus to hang out with children. According to Murrow, boys need to see pictures of Jesus hanging out with other men.

Murrow pointed out the growth of the phrase, "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," as particularly damaging to the Church. One hundred years ago if you said that, it wouldn't have made sense to anyone. Today, however, it is probably the most used phrase to describe salvation. Women's movies feature a heroine who finds a happy relationship with a wonderful man. Men's movies feature a hero who saves the world against impossible odds. We tend to speak of Jesus as if we are the heroine of a women's movie instead of speaking of him as the hero of a men's movie. Jesus is the hero who saved the world against impossible odds.

Churches need to keep this information in mind. If you want to have a growing church, you must appeal to both men and women and not set up systems that guarantee that men won't want to come to your church. The churches with the smallest gender gap are non-denominational 55% women and 45% men and they are also the fastest growing churches. A recent study released found that churches with a large number of men tend to be growing churches. (pdf)

Murrow was careful to point out that his book is not about creating male-dominated churches. It is more about restoring a balance that has been lost.

Another point, that I heard elsewhere about this issue... There is a growing number of areas that were formerly male territory that are being marketed specifically to women now. Places like Lowes or Home Depot are putting on events specifically for women - "Do it herself workshops." You can purchase pink power tools, screwdrivers, and hammers. However, to my knowledge there are no similar movements to get men involved in scrap booking. The point of this is that it appears than women can do masculine, but men don't do feminine. The application for churches is that we need to create male friendly environments and if we can do that successfully, men and women will come. Women want to go to church with their husbands and sons. If they need to "sacrifice" the flowers all over the building and the pink pew cushions to have that, they are willing to do that!

Liviu Librescu

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:53:00 +0000

On September 11th I remember thinking that there would be some amazing stories that came out of this terrible tragedy. Yesterday at Virginia Tech 32 people lost their lives because of one young man. While that young man was taking so many lives, another man was laying down his life so that others would live. Here are two articles I saw today about Liviu Librescu and his act of sacrifice.

Instructor/Holocaust survivor dies in massacre protecting students

Laurie Copans/Associated Press
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

JERUSALEM — The e-mails from grateful students arrived soon after Liviu Librescu was shot to death, telling how the Holocaust survivor barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives at the cost of his own.

Librescu, 76, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer who survived the Nazi killings and later escaped from Communist Romania, was one of several foreign victims of Monday's shootings, which coincided with Israel's Holocaust remembrance day.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Librescu's son, Joe Librescu, said today in a telephone interview from his home outside Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

Joe Librescu, who studied at Virginia Tech from 1989 to 1994, said his mother received e-mails from students shortly after learning of her husband's death.

When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, the young Librescu was interned in a labor camp, and then sent along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a central ghetto in the city of Focsani, his son said. Hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews were killed by the collaborationist regime during the war.

Librescu graduated from Romania's Polytechnic University in 1953 with a degree in mechanics and aviation construction. He received a doctorate from Romania's Academy of Sciences in 1969.

Librescu found work at a government aerospace company. But his career was stymied in the 1970s because he refused to swear allegiance to the Communist regime, his son said, and he was later fired when he requested permission to move to Israel.

In 1977, according to his son, Israel's then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened to get the family an emigration permit, and they left for Israel in 1978.

Librescu left Israel for Virginia in 1985 for a sabbatical year, but eventually made the move permanent, said Joe Librescu: "His work was his life in a sense."

Librescu, who specialized in composite structures and aeroelasticity, published extensively and received numerous awards for his work.

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/apr/17/instructorholocaust-survivor-dies-massacre-protect/

VA Tech Professor Gives Life for Students

by David Slagle

As a gunman stormed Norris Hall at Virginia Tech University and began killing fellow students, the students in Prof. Liviu Librescu's classroom could heard the shouts and gunfire coming closer to their room. Realizing what was happening, Professor Librescu urged the students out the window as he braced himself against the door.

The gunman pushed against the door on the other side. An article in the New York Daily News reports that Richard Mallalieu, a student in Librescu's mechanics class, and most of his classmates hung out of the windows and dropped to the grass below--but Librescu stayed behind.

Alec Calhoun, 20, said the last thing he saw before he jumped from the window was his professor, "blocking the door against the madman in the hallway." Librescu died protecting the students.

"Courageous final act of professor," NY Daily News, Posted 4-17-2007; submitted by David Slagle

Keywords: Atonement; Christ, blood of; Christ, death of; Christ, our substitute; Sacrifice

Scripture: John 10:11-18; Romans 5:10; 1 John 3:16

David Slagle is pastor of Veritas Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

http://blog.preachingtoday.com/2007/04/va_tech_professor_gives_life_f.html

Stewarding the Life of a Servant Leader 2

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:55:00 +0000

I plan on being at this simulcast event on Saturday March 10th attending at our local site Life Center. I attended Servant Leader 1 last spring with Wayne Cordeiro, Dr. Archibald Hart
and Jack Hayford. Last year, they focused on the life of a servant leader when it comes to their word life, their work life and their worship life. This year's event looks great. I will post my notes here on the blog after the simulcast. It is Stewarding the Life of a Servant Leader in power, in purpose, and in purity. Here is the lineup:

In Power - Jack Hayford
In Purpose - Pete Scazzero
In Purity - Ted Roberts

Evangelism Seminar Session 3 Ken Ortize

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:43:00 +0000

Ken Ortize is the pastor of Calvary Spokane. He began his talk with a bunch of statistics some of which I caught, but many of them I did not. Please note I wasn't able to get sources for these either.

1500 pastors leave the ministry each month
50% of pastors get divorced
75% of pastors constantly battle depression
80% of pastors feel unqualified for their jobs
80% of Bible College or seminary graduates will drop out of the ministry within 5 years
There are 4,000 new churches started every year
7,000 churches close every year

Ken said that God wants your church to grow because He wants people to be saved. If we have churches that are evangelistically minded then we will have less problems in our churches.

Many people say that a church is either deep or wide. For example, some would claim that a church with deep biblical teaching won't grow very much because that doesn't appeal to many people and their growth would be limited. Others would claim that a church that is very big, must not have very deep teaching. Ken said that he believes that it is possible for a church to be 1 mile wide and 1 mile deep (Ephesians 3:17-18). Ken said, "Take care your your depth and God will take care of your width."

Ken then went on to look at some people throughout history that "carried evangelism to its logical conclusion." CT Studd, Adoniram Judson, and David Livingston. These stories were great. Follow the links to read more about these heroes of the faith.

Here are some more points or stories from Ken's talk that I appreciated:

Preach the Gospel in every sermon.
Turn the responsibility for evangelism over to the people that brought people. "If you brought a friend this morning, why don't you tell them your story over lunch after the service."
Faith means taking risks. Ken said that if he is going to fail he wants to fail colossally so that everyone around him says, "wow, that was a big failure!" Failing big in attempting great things for God is better than being paralyzed by a fear of failure and not doing anything.
Ken mentioned this story - Many years ago, archaeologists discovered the tomb of Charlemagne, (the) great 8th- and 9th-century king and emperor of France. When the tomb was opened, after being closed for centuries, the men who entered it found something amazing. They found certain treasures of the kingdom, of course. But in the center of the large vault was a throne, and seated on the throne was the skeleton of Charlemagne, with an open Bible on his lap, and a bony finger pointing at the words, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" (I found this story here)
He said that he is encouraged when other pastors come up to him and tell him that some people that used to attend his church attend their church now and are involved and contributing in their new church. He isn't offended when people leave because Calvary's goal isn't to retain people it is to disciple them.

Power Points from This Session:

Church History Motivates the Church Today – I didn't go into much detail above about the stories of the people that Ken talked about, but they were inspiring. I love hearing about the great men and women of God who have gone before us. I keep running into things lately that have challenged me to go back and look to the past for motivation in serving God. John Piper in this article challenges follower of Christ to read Christian biographies. He says that Hebrew 11 is a divine mandate to consider the lives of those who lived for Christ before us.
Evangelism is the Church's Selfishness Antidote– This idea came from session two with pastor Joe as well as from Ken's talk. The idea is that an individual is selfish by default. If they have nothing in their lives to fight against that selfishness they will simply continue to be selfish. The church is made up of a bunch of people so magnify that by hundreds of people who default to selfishness and you see the problem. However, if the pastor is constantly challenging his people to think outwardly by raising high the banner of evangelism, then this will counteract that selfish tendency that people have.

Evangelism Seminar Session 2 Joe Wittwer

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:30:00 +0000

The second session from the Evangelism seminar was by Joe Wittwer from Life Center here in Spokane. I have a great deal of respect for Pastor Joe for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that my church exists because his church had a vision for starting a church planting movement in Spokane. At the end of his talk Joe asked how many of the pastors that were gathered for the conference were a part of a church plant and a few scattered hands went up (Grant and myself put our hands up). He said, “Let me ask that again, how many of you are a part of a church plant? I should see every hand in the room go up.” Every church was started at some point by someone. Every church was a church plant once. That was refreshing and a good reminder for me. It seems like no time at all since Liferoads began 4 and a half years ago, but for some of the guys gathered there, it has been 50 or 60 years since their church started. That’s a lot of time to forget their humble beginnings. His point was that since someone started our church, we should be involved in starting other churches as well. I agree wholeheartedly. Church planting is powerful. There is a huge impact in establishing a kingdom outpost in a place where there wasn’t one before. There is my church planting rant, now I’ll go back and start at the beginning of Joe’s talk.

Joe introduced us to the ”Find, Tell, Bring” strategy that they use at Life Center to empower their people to share their faith with their friends, family, and neighbors. At least once a year they go over find, tell, bring on a Sunday and have their people write down names on their “love list.” The “love list” is a list of people that are far from God that they have relationships with. Life Center attendees are challenged to put this list in their Bibles and commit to praying for the people on that list every day. Joe challenges them to pray specifically for receptive hearts and opportunities to share their faith with them. Here is a link to an mp3 file of the most recent evangelism talk that Joe did at Life Center Vision Sunday 2006 “Out and In” .

The sketch above was helpful for me (although a little cheesy due to the amount of time I spent putting it together). Joe, asked us to take a piece of paper and write out something that looked like what you see above. "0" represents someone that is lost and far from God. "100" represents someone who is a fully devoted follower of Christ. "50" and the cross represents the point at which someone becomes a follower of Christ. 0-50 is "evangelism. " Joe asked us what 50-100 was and many of us (myself included) said "discipleship." Joe corrected us and said 50-100 represents "edification" because the whole process was discipleship. Life Center's goal is to empower their people to help their friends, family, and neighbors go from 0-50 and beyond using the Find, Tell, Bring strategy.

Find: build authentic relationships with unbelieving people

Many Christians after they have been Christians for about two years end up hanging out almost exclusively with other Christians. Luis Palau said, “Church is like manure. Piled up it stinks to high heaven. Spread out it enriches the world.” Joe talked about how we need to have real friendships with people who are far from Christ. Those friendships need to be friendships without “a hook.” In other words, we will be friends with those people regardless of whether or not they ever come to Christ. Pre-Christian people probably won’t find Christ without a relationship with someone who knows Christ.

Tell: share what you know about Christ

When someone can see that you really care, you have earned the right to be heard.

Bring: bring them to church with you

Joe spent quite a bit of time on this one. Life Center is very intentional about how they put their weekend services together. Everything is designed so that Life Center is “a safe place to hear the dangerous message of Jesus Christ.”

Specifically, they focus on three things:

Contemporary music
Creative visuals
Limiting “Christianese”

Archbishop William Temple said, “the church is the only organization in the world that exists for the people that aren’t in it.” * If this quote is true, then we must be mindful of those who don’t yet follow Christ when we put our services together.

You are never more aware of how things appear to an "outsider" in your church than you are when you bring someone with you who doesn't go to church. If you attend a church for a little while then you are forgiving when someone singing the special is off key or when the pastor does the whole sermon in "Christianese" (language that only church people understand - redemption, sanctification, hallelujah...). When you bring someone with you, though, you cringe every time the special singer misses that note or every time the pastor says "Anthropomorphism" because you are concerned that those things will be irritating or confusing for your friend. Someone who is embarrassed of their church isn't going to invite people. Life Center tries to look at things from the perspective of someone who doesn't go to church. He stressed that they are not a "seeker church." They are, however, seeker friendly.

Power Points from This Session:

Relationships bring people to Christ – Very few people find Christ outside of the context of a relationship. A solid relationship with someone who is far from God is much more likely to bring that person to Christ than any other method of evangelism (door to door evangelism, street preaching, tracts, etc).
Look at your church from the perspective of someone far from God – Would someone far from God feel comfortable in your church or would they feel confused and uncomfortable.

*Note: I've seen several different variations of this quote. The spirit is the same regardless of the exact wording.

Evangelism Seminar Session 1 Bill Putman

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:32:00 +0000

The first speaker last Wednesday at the Evangelism Seminar was Bill Putman, father of Jim Putman from Real Life Ministries in Post Falls. I appreciate hearing the wisdom of people who have been in ministry for as long as Bill has.

Bill Putman is a silver-haired pastor that is turning 65 this year. He started out by telling us that he had helped to plant 12 churches in his lifetime, but he regrets missing the point as he was planting all of those churches through the years. He said that most churches focus on 4 things in their church:

Having great childcare
Having great worship
Having great preaching
Having a great facility

Obviously, these 4 things aren’t wrong, but many pastors focus on these things to the detriment of the great commission. The point is making disciples, everything else is secondary. Bill said that most churches that focus on these things end up being an inch deep and a mile wide. They end up just “bearing babies” instead of making disciples.

Bill shared some statistics with us. I wasn’t able to write all of them down, but here is what I was able to get.

According to Barna only 14% of all churches are growing. 12% of all churches are growing by transfer growth and 2% are growing through evangelism. Most churches that are growing are “mega churches” and they average 38% growth.

Real Life Ministries has grown 247% in the last 4 years. In 2003 there were 2010 people, in 2005 there were 4065 and in 2006 there were 6,164 people.

I believe this next statistic was a Barna stat as well. There was a recent study that came out that said that more people than ever are involved in church small groups, bible studies, or Sunday school classes. That new high was 23%. So 23% of all church attenders are involved in small groups, etc… At Real Life Ministries in 2006, there were 6,100 people involved in small groups. There are 600 small group leaders and 600 small group apprentices who are planning on starting their own groups.

They seem to be all about the “apprentice” style of discipleship and leadership. I really appreciate that. That seems to be the way Jesus did things!

Bill said that three quarters of their staff have never taken a Bible college class.

Bill then started talking about evangelism. He told the story of the demon-possessed man that Jesus healed and he told the man to go tell his friends and his family what the Lord had done for him. Bill said that is their model at RLM. People just need to tell their stories about what God has done for them to the people close to them. He said, “people don’t need to know what you believe, they need to know who you believe.” They need your stories.

Real Life Ministries seems to be intensely focused on evangelism and small groups. One of the things that Bill alluded to without going into much detail was that everyone who regularly attends RLM has to fill out a little yellow card every week when they come to church. He said that if they don’t, they get a phone call asking how they are doing. Not that they are trying to be intrusive and harsh, but that they are trying to keep people accountable and want to know how to pray for them.

Power Points from This Session:

Apprentice Model of Discipleship – one person disciples 6 people who in turn disciple 6 others, who in turn disciple 6 others and on and on …
Small Groups – I study lots of different churches and this seems to be a common thread of many of the successful churches that I’ve seen in the past 5 years. The churches that are really growing and thriving have thriving small groups. I believe it is the best way for people to experience genuine community.

Amazing Local Evangelism Seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:08:00 +0000

Yesterday from 9:00am - 12:00pm I attended an evangelism seminar at Fourth Memorial Church put on by the Greater Spokane Association of Evangelicals. There were three pastors from some of the larger churches in the area that presented an hour apiece about how their individual churches approach evangelism. It was a world-class event. There were about 165 pastors or lay leaders there from all over the region.

The first speaker was Bill Putman father of Jim Putman from Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho. He was great. He talked about the explosion of growth that they have seen at their church (averaging 247% growth in the last 4 years) and what they focus on. This church has close to 100% small group participation which is phenomenal. I have a few pages of notes from this first session that I am going to try to put into some logical order and then I will post it later. I will try to do the same with the other speakers as well.

The next speaker was Joe Wittwer from Life Center Church . Life Center is our mother church and our church exists because of the amazing dedication to evangelism that Life Center has. I have a great deal of respect for Pastor Joe and I really appreciated and was challenged by this session. More notes to come from this one as well.

The final session was by Ken Ortize from Calvary Spokane. This session was great. I will post my notes from this session later as well.

The GSAE did a great job putting this event together. They are hoping to do more events like this. I hope they do.

More on this event later...

Silas

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:25:00 +0000

Silas Alan Johnson born on September 3, 2006 - 10lbs 5 oz. There is nothing like being a dad!

Imperfectly Perfected Message

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:25:00 +0000

Here is a recent message of mine from Liferoads. I really enjoyed giving this message because our creative team at Liferoads put together an amazing visual. They got two identical clay pots and broke one of them into hundreds of pieces and put it back together with cracks and holes all over the place. I asked at the beginning of the message which of these pots would be more useful for holding water? Everyone answered the obvious answer - the one that wasn't broken. The broken pot and the whole pot both had candles in them. When I got to a certain point in the message, I lit both candles and they brought the house lights down. I then asked everyone which of these pots is better at spreading light. The broken pot was much better at spreading light than the whole pot. That's the way that we are. In our brokenness we allow God's glory to shine through. We think that we need to be perfect to be useful to God, but God uses our brokenness and wounds to shine through and glorify Himself.
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Technorati profile

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:32:00 +0000

Technorati Profile

Thoughts on almost being a dad

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 02:59:00 +0000

My Very pregnant wife and I hanging out by Lake Couer d'Alene this week

My wife is 37 weeks pregnant as of Friday with our first child. It's a boy and his name is Silas. Very excited about that. It's hard to believe that in a matter of weeks I will have a little son. Crazy!

We just finished our prenatal class. We spent the last 4 Tuesday nights learning about the cervix, the placenta, and various forms of mucous and other assorted fluids. It was pretty special. All joking aside, though, I actually got quite a bit out of the class. We had a ton of questions about the whole process of childbirth. How do you know that you're going into labor? What does a contraction feel like? How long does labor typically last? How about drugs?(Apparently they will give you an epideral at 4 cm although at this point my wife is planning on just saying no.) The class was great at answering those questions and I definitely feel much more confident when I think about the big day (from here on referred to as Gameday).

Teaching At Kids' Camp 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 01:51:00 +0000

Had an amazing time at Kids' Camp at Riverview Bible Camp. The kids loved my David and Goliath Story.

Test Post

noreply@blogger.com (Donnie Johnson) — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 01:13:00 +0000

Test Post