By Allen White Most people are well aware of actor Robin Williams’ passing this week. The public outpouring from every sector is tremendous. This man touched a lot of people’s lives. Whether they embraced him as Mork from Ork, or “Captain, my captain,” or a DJ in Vietnam, or a loveable, hope-inspiring doctor in Patch Adams, Robin Williams connected deeply in a lighthearted way with such a broad cross section of people. His inner child was his outer adult, which shows bravery most of us lack. But, pastor, before Robin Williams appears in your sermon, here are a few things to consider: 1. Suicide has had a Personal Effect on Your Congregation. Somehow, someway, everyone’s lives are touched by suicide. For me, it was a friend who took his life during the last week of Bible college, because he lived in such turmoil he could see no way forward. Most people don’t consider suicide, but some do. Some of the people who hear your words will see a friend or loved one in Robin Williams’ coffin. Others will see themselves. If you send Robin Williams to Hell, you are also sending their loved ones there. If you send Robin Williams to Heaven, what are you saying to those whose thoughts venture to suicide in their darker moments. I’m intentionally not saying where to take this, but I am encouraging you to think about this. 2. Finding Jesus is NOT the Cure for Depression. God can heal physical and mental diseases. No doubt. Personally, I have prayed for people who have received miraculous healing. I’ve also prayed with people who received miraculous grace that got them through one day at a time. If Robin Williams had died of cancer or heart disease, we might be more understanding. After all, many physical illnesses are incurable. Mental illness is also incurable. While mental illness can be managed and treated, it never goes away. For some reason, especially in the church, we often judge people who are mentally ill as making poor choices in their lives or somehow not fully trusting in God. It’s almost as if physical impairments can’t be helped, but mental impairments just require people to simply try harder. If trying hard cured mental illness, then mental illness would be cured, because I don’t ‘know of anyone who tries harder to fit in or just function than people who struggle with these diseases. There are plenty of Christians who love Jesus with all of their hearts and have committed their entire lives to him, yet they are Schizophrenic, Bipolar, Clinically Depressed or smitten with another illness. There are also Christians who love Jesus, and they struggle with diabetes, heart disease, obesity and a number of other mostly preventable conditions which are actually within their control. Their deaths may not be imminent, but they certainly will come sooner than they should. Mental and spiritual matters seem more inseparable than physical and spiritual matters. The fine line between the soul and spirit is hard to navigate. Can our souls be saved, while our minds are “lost”? That doesn’t even make sense. We are whole beings. Yet, just as the Apostle Paul prayed for his tormenting illness to disappear, God offered grace instead of healing. 3. The Church Must Do Something. People suffering from mental illness are often misunderstood and stigmatized. As hard as they try, they often don’t fit in. If they have a family, the family often feels like outsiders as well. Where can they find acceptance and understanding? If it’s not the church, then where? What help and support does your church offer to those with mental illness and their caregivers and families? Are they welcome through your doors? When they come, are you prepared to accept them? Will you offer support? Are there organizations in your community that your church can partner with? At a minimum, could you offer a meeting room for a NAMI group for free? Are you familiar with Rick and Kay Warren’s conference at Saddleback called The Gathering on Mental Health and the Church? People with mental illness are exceptional. Certainly every mentally ill person is not a comic genius like Robin Williams, but they are exceptional because they don’t fit into the norm. Institutions are best equipped to serve those in the norm — schools, government, even the church cater to the average Joe. Most institutions are either too small to have resources or are too large to deal with exceptions. Yet, there are families with autistic children (1 in 88 children now) who will never fit into your Sunday school without being a “behavior problem.” Should they just stay home? After all, there are 87 out of 88 to pursue. No one is doing great work with the mentally ill. They are constantly shuffled back and forth from agency to agency. Most will end up in jail or homeless or dead. The church possesses the hope of the world. If anyone should care, shouldn’t it be the church? Begin to equip yourself, and God will use you. Be open. Before you mention Robin Williams, do you truly understand his illness? It’s not easy to reconcile a life that brought so much pleasure to so many, yet was tormented by so much pain. Before you go there, what are you willing to do to help the next “Robin Williams” who walks through your church door? It was probably too soon to write a blog post about Robin Williams. But, so many posts and comments are appearing that are condemning Robin Williams and judging him without truly knowing him or understanding his struggle. I felt I needed to saysomething. This is a tragic loss. If you need a sermon illustration for Sunday, use something else. It’s too soon. Robin Williams affected many, many lives and means so much to so many. A trite sermon illustration does him a disservice. He was a very special person, exceptional even.
Video-based small group curriculum has been with us for about a decade now. Early innovators like Rick Warren and Brett Eastman at Saddleback Church brought the local pastor into the living room. Brett went on to found Lifetogether.com, which has sold about 4 million units to date. Many other video-based studies have followed and have succeeded. With all of the professionally produced video curriculum out there, why would a church want to create their own? While well-known pastors have produced some excellent studies, your pastor’s face on the screen presents some strong advantages for your congregation.
1. Takes the Weekend into the Week. The hustle and bustle of life tends to edge out the Sunday morning sermon after a day or so. While some sermons are remembered better than others, most are long forgotten by mid-week. By providing small groups with studies based on the weekend message, the points made on Sunday can take deeper root. By creating space in the small group to review the weekend message via a short video (no more than 10 minutes), the group has a chance to review the points, ask questions, discuss issues and make a specific application to their lives. Giving groups the opportunity to think about the message and what it means to them causes the group members to retain more. In groups they can involve more of themselves in the teaching. Rather than simply listening and maybe taking notes, group members can wrestle with hard questions and get the encouragement and accountability they need to live out the message. 2. Engages the Senior Pastor’s Teaching Gift. A senior pastor without a teaching gift is not a senior pastor for long. This is the most public and most personal role of any senior pastor. Speaking is hard work. Even the most gifted teachers spend hours gathering material, studying, collecting illustrations, and polishing their messages. Once Sunday is finished, for most pastors, the countdown clock to next week’s sermon begins. The one they worked so hard on for this week is now a thing of the past. But, it doesn’t have to be. What if the pastor could sit down in a living room with his church members and teach them the part he couldn’t get to on Sunday morning? What if in that circle the pastor could share his heart about what the Bible passage means and what it would mean if people started obeying it? A video-based curriculum can breathe new life into a message destined for the archives. Not only will the congregation learn more, but the message will go farther through the group. 3. Elevates the Role of Groups. For most churchgoers, the initial draw to a church is the pastor’s teaching and the music. As hard as the other church staff work in their roles, this is the simple truth. Other than Jesus Himself, the senior pastor plays a highly significant role in the spiritual lives of his congregation. By connecting the small group study to the weekend message, you can leverage the influence of the senior pastor in leading his people to connect in small groups. Once the pastor has created a video curriculum, his next question will be “How do we use this? How do we recruit more leaders? How do we get people into groups?” Don’t you want your senior pastor asking those questions? What’s important to the senior pastor will be what’s important to the congregation. Bulletins, video announcements, website – none of these come close to having the #1 influencer in the church direct the congregation. When the pastor asks for people to host groups, people will host groups. When the pastor invites members to join groups, members will join groups. When E.F. Hutton talks… I learned this lesson about a decade ago. I had spent seven years recruiting and training leaders only to find 30 percent of our congregation in groups. But, the first time our senior pastor stood up and asked for host homes, we doubled our groups in one day. I never looked back. He did all of the recruiting and leading from that point forward. 4. Moves the Weekend Message Beyond the Church Walls. When church members invite their friends, neighbors, co-workers, relatives and others to join them for a church-produced Bible study, the senior pastor is introduced to many more people than actually attend the church on Sunday. In homes, workplaces, Starbucks and even commuter trains, the pastor’s teaching goes out to many new people. Often new people will meet the pastor via video before they meet him in person. But, the transition from the living room to the church auditorium now is not quite as daunting. New folks feel they’ve already met the pastor through the weekly group studies. And, don’t tell the group hosts and leaders, but they’re actually doing evangelism. Shhh. 5. Puts Group Multiplication on Steroids. A DVD curriculum is easy to use. In fact, someone who has never led before simply needs to follow the instructions. The teaching on the DVD provides the wisdom and expertise. The questions in the book provide the pathway for a great discussion. Pushing play and reading questions is not so hard. Think about this: every person in your church has friends. The people who are less involved in the church will actually have far more friends outside of the church. What if your church members each gathered a group of 8-10 people for a video-based study featuring your senior pastor? Could a church of 100 members reach 1,000 people? What about a church of 1,000 going after 10,000? What about a church of 13,000 reaching over 100,000? Is it possible? The Bible says all things are possible with God. I’ve created quite a few DVD-based studies in both churches I’ve served at over the last 10 years. If you’d like some help creating your own curriculum, shoot me an email at allen (at) lifetogether.com (For non-Outlook users, replace (at) with @).
By Allen White Last week I had the privilege of sharing a few thoughts with Jay Daniell, host of GroupTalk for the Small Group Network. We talked about recruiting new small group leaders. I had the chance of sharing about five different ways and possibly at the same time. You can listen HERE. Here are my notes from the call: What is a group leader?
An “Official” Group Leader representing the church
A Group Host for one series
Someone who gathers their friends for a study – 700 new launched at HPC this month.
Will they have the title of “leader”?
Will their names be on the church website?
Will they participate in a connection event?
Who should you recruit?
Influencers, existing group members, anyone willing.
The type of group will determine the starting point re: qualifications.
Official group – church member, training, interview.
Host home – member or not, briefing, interview/application.
“Go and Grow” – breathing and briefing
What should you recruit them to?
DVD-based curriculum – easy to use.
Just-in-time training – on the DVD, Youtube, blog.
Trial Run – 6 weeks – Are they actually good at gathering and leading?
A job description and a rigorous process don’t guarantee “problem free” groups. According to Mark Howell, there is no “problem free.”
How should you recruit them?
Small Group Pastor/Director – You shouldn’t.
Leverage your senior pastor and the pulpit.
Align the weekend service and the group study, if you can. If not, leverage the senior pastor and the pulpit anyway for a non-aligned DVD-based series.
What if my senior pastor isn’t interested?
Get your senior pastor interested.
Create your own curriculum.
Give your pastor great stories from small groups.
Begin to think: “How can we launch small groups on that?” – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparents Day, Columbus Day (singles)… Church events, church initiatives, major strategic moves in coming year.
Intersect groups with your pastor’s interests.
If your pastor wants to engage men, the answer is groups.
If your pastor wants to improve stewardship, answer = groups.
If your pastor wants to build a building…
If your pastor wants to disciple new believers…
Emphasize missions…
Wherever God is leading your senior pastor to go, head right into that direction and become a broken record.
A recent article in the Orange County Register led readers to believe Rick Warren thinks the gods of Christianity and Islam are the same. Here is the original article from the OC Register: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/muslims-341669-warren-saddleback.html Below is an interview with Rick Warren in response to these questions: RICK WARREN ON MUSLIMS, EVANGELISM & MISSIONS (with Brandon A. Cox & Christian Post) QUESTION: Do people of other religions worship the same God as Christians? WARREN: Of course not. Christians have a view of God that is unique. We believe Jesus is God! We believe God is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not 3 separate gods but one God. No other faith believes Jesus is God. My God is Jesus. The belief in God as a Trinity is the foundational difference between Christians and everyone else. There are 2.1 billion people who call themselves Christians… whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal, or Evangelical…and they all have the doctrine of the Trinity in common. QUESTION: A recent newspaper article claimed you believe Christians and Muslims worship the same God, that you are “in partnership” with a mosque, and that you both agreed to “not evangelize each other.”You immediately posted a brief refutation online. Can you expand on that? WARREN: Sure. All three of those statements are flat out wrong. Those statements were made by a reporter, not by me. I did not say them … I do not believe them… I completely disagree with them … and no one even talked to me about that article! So let me address each one individually: First, as I’ve already said, Christians have a fundamentally different view of God than Muslims. We worship Jesus as God. Muslims don’t. Our God is Jesus, not Allah. Colossians 2:9 “For in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Second, while we urge our members to build friendships with everyone in our community, including Muslims and other faiths, (“Love your neighbor as yourself”), our church has never had any partnership with a mosque. Friendship and partnership are two very different levels of commitment. Some of our members have hosted a Bible study with Muslim friends, which I applaud, but I’ve never been to it, and a Bible study certainly isn’t any kind of partnership or merger! It’s just crazy that a simple Bible Study where people explore Scripture with non-Christians would be reported as a partnership and others would interpret that as a plan for a new compromised religion. Just crazy! Third, as both an Evangelical and as an evangelist, anyone who knows me and my 40 year track record of ministry knows that I would never agree to “not evangelizing” anyone! I am commanded by my Savior to share the Good News with all people everywhere, all the time, in every way possible! Anyone who’s heard me teach knows that my heart beats for bringing others to Jesus. QUESTION: That same article mentioned that you ate an Iftar dinner with Orange County Muslims. What is that all about? WARREN: It’s called being polite and a good neighbor. For years, we have invited Muslim friends to attend our Easter and Christmas services and they have graciously attended year after year. Some have even celebrated our family’s personal Christmas service in our home. So when they have a potluck when their month of fasting ends, we go to their party. It’s a Jesus thing. The Pharisees criticized him as “the friend of sinners” because Jesus ate dinner with people they disapproved of. By the way, one of my dear friends is a Jewish Rabbi and my family has celebrated Passover at his home, and he attends our Christmas and Easter services. I wish more Christians would reach out in love like Jesus. QUESTION: Why do you think people who call themselves Christians sometimes say the most hateful things about Muslims? WARREN: Well, some of those folks probably aren’t really Christians. 1 John 4:20 says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” And 1 John 2:9 says “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” I am not allowed by Jesus to hate anyone. Our culture has accepted two huge lies: The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate. QUESTION: Let’s talk about evangelism. In the past 10 years, Saddleback Church has baptized over 24,000 new believers. No other church comes close to that record. You are likely the most evangelistic church in America. What’s the key? WARREN: We are willing to do what many other churches are unwilling to do. We are willing to go beyond our comfort zone. QUESTION: For instance? WARREN: Because Jesus commanded us to take the Gospel to everyone, I spend much of my time with groups of people who completely disagree with what I believe. I’m constantly trying to build a bridge of love to nonbelievers, to atheists, to gays, to those I disagree with politically, and to those of other faiths. We don’t wait for these people to come to church; we go to them and share with them on their turf, not ours. Every member is a minister and a missionary. Saddleback was a missional church 30 years before the term became popular. We just called it being “purpose driven”. QUESTION: “Building a bridge” sounds like compromise to many people. WARREN: Building a bridge has nothing to do with compromising your beliefs. It’s all about your behavior and your attitude toward them. It’s about genuinely loving people. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Before people ask, “Is Jesus credible?” they want to know if you are credible. Before people trust Jesus they must trust you. You cannot win your enemies to Christ, only your friends. It’s part of what Paul calls “the ministry of reconciliation.” It is Christ-like to treat people with dignity and listen to them with respect. QUESTION: Why are most Christians so ineffective at sharing their faith? WARREN: I have a whole seminar on that! First, they don’t really have any unbelieving friends. They spend all their time with other Christians. As a result, they are afraid to share their faith because it feels unnatural to them. For most people to come to Christ, you must build a relationship with them first. You must love them. The truth is, most Christians love everything else more than the people around them that Jesus died for. Second, many don’t really believe that people are lost without Christ. Third, many Christians are afraid of the criticism they will receive from other Christians if they hang out with unbelievers. It was the religious people who hated Jesus the most. They criticized him for associating with tax collectors and lepers and prostitutes and politicians and going to parties. Lost people loved Jesus but the religious folks saw his associations as dangerous compromise. The same is true today. Modern Pharisees still use guilt by association as a weapon. Just read the blogs. They’d rather hunker in a bunker and attack those courageous enough to reach out to non-Christians. I do not fear the disapproval of others. I fear the disapproval of God on my disobedience to what he has clearly commanded us to do. QUESTION: What is the P.E.A.C.E. plan? WARREN: It is a biblical strategy of ministry based on five activities Jesus modeled in his ministry. Saddleback members have been beta testing it for the past nine years all around the world. Each letter of P.E.A.C.E. represents one of five things Jesus taught his disciples to do: P stands for Plant churches. E stands for Equip leaders. A stands for Assist the poor. C stands for Care for the sick. E stands for Educate the next generation. The PEACE plan is accomplished by local churches through local churches. It is based on three passages of Scripture and the specific instructions Jesus gave to his teams that he sent out. There are at least a dozen major differences between the PEACE Plan and the traditional, typical mission program of NGOs and parachurch organizations of the past 100 years. It is a return to the missional strategy. QUESTION: What is the PEACE Center? WARREN: Based on Jesus’ instructions in Acts 1:8, we practice the PEACE Plan in three dimensions: PERSONAL PEACE – my ministry to those closest to me; LOCAL PEACE -our congregation’s ministry to our community; and GLOBAL PEACE – serving other local churches around the world as those congregations do their own local PEACE. The PEACE Center is the building on our church campus that houses about three dozen of our 300 ministries to the community. It offers our food bank, job training, family counseling, legal aid, car repair, tutoring, English as a second language, legal immigration assistance, and many other ministries. QUESTION: I read an article that claimed you were building a PEACE Center to bring Muslims and Christians together in peace. WARREN: It was the writer’s mistake. He got two different stories confused. Our recently opened PEACE Center, on the Saddleback Church campus has NOTHING …zero… to do with our Muslim friends. This is an example of why I always doubt what I read in newspapers and blogs about ministries. Secular reporters trying to cover churches and theological issues often get it wrong. But then Christian bloggers, instead of contacting the ministry, blindly believe, quote and repost the errors made by secular reporters. Then those errors become permanent, searchable, and global on the Internet. I couldn’t count the number of times a secular reporter has gotten a story about Saddleback wrong but then it is perpetuated by Christians who never fact-check. And the three factors I mentioned about the Internet make it impossible to correct all the misperceptions, and outright lies that get repeated over and over. QUESTION: You mentioned legal immigration services. How many languages do Saddleback members speak? WARREN: At last count, I heard we speak 76 languages in our church family. One of our 10 values, the “A” in our S.A.D.D.L.E.B.A.C.K. strategy, is that we are an ALL-nation congregation. We are a multi-ethnic church. We want our congregation to look like heaven will look – with every age, race, tribe, and economic background represented. QUESTION: What is the goal of your ministry? WARREN: To know Christ and make Him known! To live out Jesus’ Great Commandment and Great Commission! In fact, this has been the motto of Saddleback Church since we started it in 1980: “A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a great church.” Everything we do comes out of these two great texts. God’s five eternal purposes for both our lives and the church proceed from these verses. The Purpose Driven Church and The Purpose Driven Life explain this in detail. QUESTION: Through the PEACE Plan,Saddleback became the first local congregation in 2000 years of Christian history to send its members to literally “every nation” as Jesus commanded. WARREN: That’s correct. QUESTION: How did you accomplish that? WARREN: By taking Jesus’ command seriously. When Jesus said, “Go to EVERY nation” we asked ourselves as a church family, “Has any local church in 2000 years ever actually done that? If not, why don’t we be the first!” So we set a goal to send our members to every nation of the world to do the five tasks of the P.E.A.C.E. Plan by the end of 2010. Of course I know that the Greek ta ethne refers to people groups or tribes not political nations, but you have to start somewhere! So we decided that we would send our members on mission to all 197 nations in the world. (There are 195 nations in the United Nations. The only two nations not in the United Nations are Taiwan and Serbia.) On November 18, 2010, a Saddleback team went to the last nation, #197, a small island in the Caribbean called, St. Kitts. Now, our goal for the next decade, which we call our Decade of Destiny is to mobilize a network of churches who will commit to planting new churches in the final 3,600 unengaged people groups that still do not have a Christian church. QUESTION: How many members did you send out to complete your church’s goal of taking the gospel to every nation? WARREN: 15,867 members were sent out. Of course, we’ve gone way past that in the last year. QUESTION: What is your mission goal this year? WARREN: Within a year from this Easter, we intend to plant new churches in 12 strategic cities around the world as resource centers and base camps for the greater goal of planting churches in the 3600 unengaged people groups. QUESTION: What are those 12 cities? WARREN: Tokyo, Berlin, Johannesburg, Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, London, Freetown, Moscow, Mexico City, Amman, and Manila. Anyone who’d like to be a part of the team should contact me at PastorRick@saddleback.com or on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. QUESTION: Are you promoting Chrislam? WARREN: Of course not. It’s the lie that won’t die. No matter how many times we refute it and correct that lie, people keep passing it on as truth. Jesus is the only way to salvation. Period. If I didn’t believe that, I’d get into a much easier line of work! But I do believe that everybody needs Jesus and I am willing to put up with false statements and misunderstandings in order to get the Gospel out. QUESTION: What are your greatest frustrations about evangelism? WARREN: That Christians would rather argue than evangelize. That people are more interested in winning arguments that in winning people. That people are more interested in making a point than in making a difference. That people put politics above the souls of people. That people are more afraid of guilt by association than allowing others to go to hell. QUESTION: If anyone wants to learn or teach their church how to be more effective in evangelism and missions what should they do? WARREN: Write to me at PastorRick@saddleback.com and ask me for an invitation to the group of leaders I train each week through a private webcast. QUESTION: Any last word? WARREN: Reach one more for Jesus! Anyone who’s read Purpose Driven Life knows those were my father’s last words and deathbed instructions to me. It is the theme of my life and I invite you to make it yours. Nothing is more important than the eternal destiny of those around us.
