Video Transcript: Life Transformation Focus

Our study of developing great commission skills is now moving into skill number  three, and skill number three setting objectives and establishing accountability,  the very first skill topic that we're going to be dealing with here is called Life  Transformation Focus. Now I'm going to I'm going to open by reading to you an  excerpt from something that I wrote some time ago. This particular entry is is  titled The program scripted church. It's my opinion that at least in the American  church, there is a a drive to follow after programming that is so strong that it's  opened the door for me to refer to the American Evangelical Church as a  program scripted church, and I don't say that in a complimentary way. Now, in  your context, if you're not in the American Evangelical Church and you're in  some other country, some other context, this might not be exactly the same for  you, but my experience in working with church leaders all over the world is that  people are people, and yes, there are certain cultural differences and nuances  to different places in the world. But people are always people, and they tend to  act the same way. Human nature tends to be the same regardless. So I think  that you will find this concept to be applicable even if you're in some context  other than the American Evangelical Church. Now I don't typically want to read  to you in the middle of a video, but I think this is important enough that I want to  take a few moments to do that. So let me read this. The program, scripted  Church, the American Evangelical Church of the past 100 years is highly vested  in program ministry, whether those programs are traditional or conventional in  nature, the modern attractional model or seeker model, or the post modern  casual Rock Band low key teaching model. The central organizing motif is the  same ministry by programs. This might be identified as the program, scripted  church, as the name implies. This is a script that is followed, not necessarily by  design, but surely by default without even considering alternatives. The church's ministry is program driven. Staffing is determined by programs. Space is allotted according to programs. Budgets are formulated according to programs, and  volunteers are recruited to man the programs. There is a sense that  effectiveness is a product of well run programs, and the seemingly well run  program follows a very predictable path that has been laid out over centuries.  Excuse me, over decades of historical and habitual program patterns now giving the benefit of the doubt that this program scripted approach to ministry worked  in the past, it no longer works today, simply put, if most churches are program  driven, or at least aspire to be, and most churches are in plateau or decline, it  stands to reason that the program, scripted approach to ministry must give way  to something different, something new, something fresh, something innovative.  Ironically, to go forward, we must go back, not back to the ministry of the past 50 years, but back to the ministry of the apostles who were commanded to go and  make disciples, the church must focus anew on the making of disciples and not  the Running of programs. For most This will require significant change the  program, scripted church is often a church that is devoid of clear objectives and 

accountability. That's the warning, the word of warning for the program, scripted  Church, the program. Scripted church is often a church that is devoid of clear  objectives and accountability. So let's talk about metrics. Let's talk about ministry metrics. Measurement of ministry is informal at best, and tends to lean on  activity rather than on results. You know, programs are scattered throughout the  church calendar, and they seem to multiply until there's no room left on the  calendar. The calendar is filled with services, classes, activities, events, and as  long as the calendar is full and everyone is busy, we reason that we're doing all  that we we possibly can. Now, this can be reflective of a high level of  commitment, which is admirable, but the bottom line is not busyness. The  bottom line is effectiveness. Ministry needs to produce results, not just a flurry of activity. Let me say that again, ministry needs to produce results, not just a flurry of activity. Now here's an example. As we're putting together great commission  objectives, which I refer to in shorthand as GCOs, we have to develop the skill  of setting objectives and establishing accountability to those objectives. Now,  one of the things that we need our people to be able to do is to share their faith.  We need them to develop personal testimonies and be able to share what God  is doing in their lives, not just what God did in their lives back when they first  came to Christ. But what God is actually doing in their lives now? And I want to  suggest to you that it's important that as we share our testimonies, we determine to share that testimony in ways that are in ways that are interesting. They're not  just mundane. There's a metrics formula that I'd like to share with you. Right  objectives plus relevant metrics equals Great Commission ministry. Right  objectives plus relevant metrics equals Great Commission ministry. So a right  objective would be that we are proactively sharing our faith because we are  prepared to share our faith. A relevant metric might be the impact of our  testimonies on others who's coming to Christ through our ministry. Now, in  thinking about personal testimonies, one thing that I've noticed is that many  times when I hear folks share a personal testimony, it sounds very much like  everyone else's personal testimony. Part of the reason for that is we're repeating what we've heard from others, but also we haven't taken the time to plan out  how to share our faith. We haven't, we haven't scripted the story of our faith, and so when we're have an opportunity to share our faith, we'll start off with  something like this. Well, I was in a church service and I felt God speaking to  me, so I went forward to receive Christ. I hear lots of folks say something like,  Well, I was born in a Christian home. Well, it's wonderful that a person is born in  a Christian home. What a blessing. But the problem with sharing your faith that  way as a testimony, see, soon as someone hears that who wasn't raised in a  Christian home, their first thought is going to be, oh, well, this, this is not for me,  because I wasn't raised in a Christian home. So find ways of portraying your  testimony in an interesting way. Let me give you a brief, personal example.  Here's one of the ways that I I tend to start off sharing my testimony. When that 

opportunity arises, I'll say something like this, Oregon Hill is a notorious  neighborhood in the heart of Richmond, Virginia. It sits right on the edge of  downtown, and so it's an inner city neighborhood. Now. As a kid, growing up in  Oregon Hill, I witnessed a lot of things that were troubling. We did have this  wonderful opportunity in our neighborhood. There was a playground, an athletic  field included a gymnasium in the complex. And there was a wonderful  gentleman who who coached teams in baseball and basketball and football  around the calendar, and so lots of neighborhood kids would go down to to this  field, the Rotary Club athletic field. We just simply called it the Rotary. We go  down to the rotary and we'd have wholesome activities to engage in. We had  things to do with our time, and they were, they were athletic, they were they  were physical. And I spent a great deal of time at the rotary as a kid, but in the  evening, when the lights would shut down at the Rotary Club and it would be  time to head home, many of the kids that I grew up with went to homes that  were severely troubled. Lots of times the fathers were missing. There was all  kinds of turmoil in their households. A lot of these kids got into trouble with the  law, spent time in juvenile detention. Some of those kids grew up as adults into  having greater range, getting into more difficulty, in perhaps spending time in  state institutions, even federal prisons. The difference for me was that when I  went home at night, I went home to a mom and dad who knew Jesus Christ, and there was a church a half block from my house. My dad was a deacon. My mom sang in the choir, and we were there on Sunday mornings. We were there on  Wednesday nights, and I heard the message of Jesus Christ over and over and  over and over and on one Sunday night, I really came to understand that God  loved me, that I needed to confess my sins, that I needed to turn to Jesus Christ as my savior. And so on that night, I went forward, when an invitation was given, I asked my dad to walk with me, and I remember looking up at the choir loft and  seeing my mother looking down in tears in her eyes the night that I professed  Christ. Now I think that's a much more interesting story than simply saying I was  raised in a Christian home, but I've thought that through, and I think it's  important for us to articulate our faith in testimonies that are not just  informational, but testimonies that are compelling. Now imagine, imagine a  congregation that's filled with people who have been prepared to share their  faith clearly have been trained to do so, have have crafted the story that they're  able to tell about their relationship with Jesus Christ, testimony. Very important.  Very important. Now I want to take a look at setting objectives. So here's a  here's a sample of two objectives. One is very vague. One is what I'm going to  call a right, great commission objective, a GCO. A right GCO objective number  one says this, well, I have an objective to share, to share our faith with others.  Well, there's nothing measurable, measurable about that. It's very vague, open  ended. What does it mean? It means that, generally speaking, I'm hoping that  folks in our church will be able to share their faith. But how about this objective, 

to train 75% of our congregation to be prepared to share their faith by  developing solid personal testimonies. Now that is an objective that is clear and  it's measurable. There has weight to it, there's there's detail to it, enough that it it compels action. So these are the kinds of, these are the kinds of objectives that  we're talking. Talking about. So the question is, how do we establish  accountability? How do we make people accountable? Well, it's one thing to  have the objective. It's another thing to be accountable to it, but one thing that  we have to do as folks in the church is we have to hold each other accountable.  We have to ask how things are going. We have to look at debriefing and  reporting. And you know, if we, if we've developed a class, for example, that is  trained in faith sharing, that is trained in in crafting testimony, we have to be  asking people. So who are you praying for that you're hoping to be able to share your testimony? Can you point to what's going on out there in the community as  you are approaching people with the gospel? You know, we've got to be asking  those hard questions of ourselves and of each other. We can't just allow things  to slide and hope that they happen. We've got to be certain that they happen.  Now this first skill topic is life transformation focus, ministry is not meant to be  transactional, but transformational. You know, Paul tells us in Scripture that if  anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the  new has come. You see, something has been transformed. It's not just a  contractual relationship, it's a covenantal relationship with Christ. So the  objective of great commission ministry is not to see churches improve, but to  see lives transformed. It's bigger than a transaction. It's a transformation. And  holding ministry accountable to life transformation keeps the church on a great  commission track. We need to be looking for life transformation. And you know, I know we can tell when someone's life is being transformed. It's a giant step  when a person comes to Christ, and there should be evidence of that step, and  we should hold ourselves accountable as church leaders, to making sure people are growing in their faith. So I want to point out a couple of ways of beginning to  frame this idea of transformation and thinking of transformation in ways that  would that would lend themselves to crafting specific objectives to which we can hold ourselves accountable. So we've actually talked about this before in a  previous session, but I want to bring this back up again, the idea of ministry  movements. Now you will recall that a ministry movement has to do with an  element of ministry that threads through every ministry area or every program or every department of the church. And so when we're when we're thinking about  the beginning of transformation, we're thinking about outreach and evangelism,  that giant leap when someone moves from being outside of faith in Christ to  being inside of faith in Christ. Now that's the starting line, as we've said multiple  times, but it's an important starting line. It's a major transformational step, and  so we want to make sure that outreach and evangelism, outreach is building  relationships with people outside. Evangelism is sharing the gospel with people 

outside. We want to make sure that some of our great commission objectives  are centered on those two movements. We want those movements reflected in  our objectives, objectives that are outreach objectives, objectives that are  evangelism objectives. Now once, once we journey down that path of meeting  outreach objectives by holding ourselves accountable, by reaching evangelism  objectives by holding ourselves accountable, we then want to move into growing people to maturity toward the fullness of Christ, as Paul has said it, in fact, in  Ephesians 4, Paul says it this way, he. He gave some the apostles. He gave the  apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip the  saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all  attain the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, until we all  attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature  manhood, to measure the stature, the fullness of Christ, so that we may no  longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every  wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful themed schemes.  Now that's a that's a mouthful, but what Paul is talking about here is, you know,  mature manhood, the measure of the stature the fullness of Christ, no longer  tossed to and fro as children. What's happening? Well, we're growing to  maturity. You see the transformation that was started in us through outreach,  and evangelism is continuing to grow through us through the movement of  discipleship. So we want to be very clear that these three movements of  outreach, evangelism and discipleship are thoroughly threaded into all of the  Ministries of our church. We're going to we're going to make our objectives focus on those three things, and we're going to hold ourselves accountable to those  things. Okay, outreach, evangelism and discipleship. Well, you know, ultimately,  how, how does this transformation take place? What's one of the the key  transformational ingredients? Well, one of the key ingredients is, is obedience,  and this is often missed. You know, as I have discussed the Great Commission  with folks over the years, I frequently, frequently will ask the question, what does the Great Commission tell us that we are to teach? And very often, the initial  answer goes something like this. People will say, well, it tells us to teach the  commands of Christ. Well, maybe, maybe I could give half credit for that answer, but that's not really. That's not really what the Great Commission says. It says,  Teach them to obey all that I have commanded you. Teach them to observe all  that I have commanded you. So the command to teach is not centered on the  commands of Christ as much as it's centered on obedience to the commands of  Christ. Now I've raised four children. I now have four grandchildren, and at this  particular moment that I'm recording this video, I have a fifth grandchild on the  way. Well over the years, when my my children were still small and at home, I  found myself using this phrase more often than I wish I would say something like this. I would say, you know better. Have you ever said that? Have you ever said  that to your children, those of you who have who have kids now, what does that 

statement imply? Well, that state. That statement implies that this child knows  what the acceptable behavior is? Knowledge is there, but that child is not being  obedient to that knowledge. So what can we glean from that simple example?  Well, we can glean that knowledge and obedience are two different things. So  when we say teach the commands of Christ and set that opposed to teach them  to obey the commands of Christ, we realize that we're talking about two very  different things. Obedience and knowledge are two different things. Now the  knowledge is important. Obviously we need to teach the commands of Christ,  but not for the sake of simply knowing. It's for the sake of obeying, of of living.  Following through with the actions that are expected, teaching obedience and  living in obedience will foster life transformation. Remember our discussion  about worshiping in spirit and truth. We took a look at Romans 12:1-2. And one  of the things that we saw in Romans 12:2 was the Paul employing us. You know, Don't be conformed to this world, but be what transformed by the renewing of  your mind, that by testing, you might discern what is the will of God, the  renewing of the mind, pouring ourselves into truth, into scripture, learning The  teachings of Christ, but more important than learning, living the teachings of  Christ now effective, effective, great commission objectives will help us to live  out, live out the commands of Christ, to live out the directives of Scripture, the  teachings of Christ, effective Great Commission objectives begin with life  transformation in mind and accountability of reaching such objectives leverages  metrics and analysis that focus on transformation. So we have two sides of this  coin, setting objectives first, but following through with accountability to those  objectives, that's what moves life transformation forward, and that life  transformation focus is what we're shooting for. So that wraps up our video on  life transformation focus. Now next time when we get together, we'll be moving  to the next skill topic, which is titled, simple and measurable. May God bless  your ongoing studies as you continue to serve Him in the name of Jesus, amen,