barriers to reaching people for Jesus – My Ministry Breakthrough

16: Jeff Meyer – The Church, Madison WI

By mmb_admin | February 11, 2019

Breakthrough ideas with Jeff:

If your church is going to reach your city, your people must embrace their calling as missionaries.
Do our seminaries train us to only care for people inside the walls, and not those outside the walls?
Are we helping Jesus followers in our churches to be fully engaged in the community?
If a church is going to be relevant, we must care for our city as much as our church.
Do you understand that your faith gives you outsider status within your community?
Jesus followers are no longer leading the conversation in our communities. We no longer have a voice in the public square.
An insider protects and preserves, an outsider penetrates and listens to influence for Jesus.
Listen to your culture and then speak the gospel into the culture.
How would Paul be on Facebook if Acts 17 was rewritten today?
How can we do less teaching in our sermons and more training with assignments?
What does training missionaries every Sunday look like?
Every leadership moment is an opportunity to train, even your board meetings.
How often are you revisiting the demographic and social trends in your community?
Your church is in a bubble. Therefore you must regularly research your community.
Provide environments where people can explore creativity and live in their design as co-creators.
What are you doing to follow Jesus? This question can change every leadership meeting you lead.
How are you following Jesus? Who are you helping follow Jesus? These are the only two questions you need to be and make a disciple.
Discipleship boils down to How and Who. Ask yourself and others these two questions.
Intentional engagement of life in Christ always comes back to How and Who.
Is it time to step down as CEO and step into the CMM (Chief Missionary Maker) role for your church?
Pastor your church with a life-long view… you cannot change a church overnight.
Simply preaching, teaching, and telling others what to do is not pastoring. Pastors lead as missionaries first, then explain, train and equip.
We can spend all our time on the temple and in the temple and miss the Jesus of the temple.
Is it possible to build a church and not engage the Great Commission?
Some of the so-called, most effective church leaders are not truly as effective as missionaries.
It is not your job to measure the spiritual growth of your people, but it is your job to create the environments and resources that help your people grow spiritually.
The more significant influence of the church is its members living as missionaries.
Is anyone coming on Easter anymore who isn’t already connected to your church?
What does incarnational ministry look like in your neighborhood Pastor?
What if instead of keeping our people busy, we equipped our people to be engaging?
Think with missionary minds to go outside in, and then equip your people and train them to go inside out on the mission.
Our job is not to get more people to come to our church; our job is to help more people see Jesus through our church.
It’s a battle to get people to live every day as missionaries and not just show up for service on Sunday.
Can the real voice of the church in her calling be heard over the sound of a single pastor?
Are your leaders fighting for the shared, God-given vision of your church or a comfortable consumer-driven vision of your church?
None of us have lived in this current church culture, maybe its time to free our people up to fail forward in reaching this culture.
Some of the best leadership moments are found by not having an answer, but instead by leading conversations.
Live what you are going to lead. Sometimes we lead without living, and that is not true discipleship.
Don’t worry so much about being a leader… focus on following well. Leaders Follow First.

Breakthrough resources in this episode:

Mission India

Pew Research Community Trends

Auxano Vision Frame

Fear Not, Dream Big and Execute by Jeff Meyer

The Artists Way by Julia Cameron

In addition to consulting and coaching Christian leaders and organizations, Jeff Meyer is the lead pastor of a local church in Madison, WI, where he has served since 1998. (www.livelifetogether.com) Outside the church, Jeff is committed to helping people discover their entrepreneurial mojo because dreams are meant to live. He works with non-profit executives, CEOs of private companies, and entrepreneurs of all stripes. His expertise includes organizational leadership, operational planning, time management, and personal development. Author of the book “Fear Not, Dream Big & Execute:Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through”, he longs to see people reawakened to their unique contribution and to help them live out that calling with competence and courage in an ever-changing world. Jeff received his Master of Divinity from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. You can follow him at jeffmeyer.org and on Facebook.

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Episode #8: Phil EuBank

By mmb_admin | October 22, 2018

Breakthrough ideas with Phil:

Reaching the lost requires removing every possible barrier of understanding – even some things you love.
It’s time to let go of some of these weird practices of the church that have nothing to do with Jesus.
Are your worship services evangelistically understandable? If you are not sure, they probably are not.
“Thank you for making me not feel stupid.” How to be a church where people can seek God and walk back to him.
Inspiring people to trade church the way we want it to become a place where God is moving is a critical job of pastoral leadership.
Making it possible to follow Jesus with a few non-essential *(stylistic, personal preference-driven) barriers as possible.
Talk about where God is calling you to go and don’t get tired of talking about it. Don’t get bored or give up… persistence toward God’s better future is critical.
Find the common ground of a church on mission and filter needed changes through a better future that God has ahead.
A unifying direction must be more than a catchphrase or neat sentence but brings a thread of accountability and direction to every part of the organization.
Everybody says they want vision but what they don’t realize they mean is that they want their own vision. There is no way to satisfy every expectation only to go where God wants us to go.
It’s easy in ministry to get consumed by the activity and lose track of Gods productivity in the lives of people.
When there are no stories, either we are not paying attention or what we are doing is not actually working.
Without purpose and meaning toward life change – church becomes a hobby and a terrible one at that.
When team members are free to share good ideas and share new approaches, they are able to take greater and greater ownership.
Time rarely solves the problems on their own… next steps matter more than a statement.
Separate the urgent from the important. Not everything that is happing now is important and not everything that is important is happening now.
When everything seems urgent, your team cannot easily discern what is actually important.
Deciding when you use these essential communication tools can define a clear line between the urgent and the important.

Breakthrough resources from this episode:

God Dreams – Will Mancini

Deep & Wide – Andy Stanley

VOXER – staff communication tool

H3 Leadership – Brad Lomenick

The Problem of God – Mark Clark

The Reason for God – Tim Keller

Phil EuBank moved to Colorado two and half years ago where he serves as the Lead Pastor of Eastern Hills Community Church. Phil makes sure everyone knows that He has a gorgeous and brilliant wife and 3 really cute kids. He loves seeing people who have given up on God or church unnecessarily coming to a life-changing relationship with Jesus.

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