Video Transcript: From Theory to Practice

welcome back. Perhaps this is the moment you have been waiting for. This is  our final of our 36 videos that are the content of the course developing great  commission skills, we've looked at six prominent skills that are necessary to be  a great commission church, and we've broken those down into six skill topics  each. And so we're going to wrap things up today, where we're wrapping up with what I'm calling from theory to practice. Now I realize that this has been a  teaching exercise, but I want you to think of it also as a training exercise, and  we'll speak more about that as we as we work our way through so let's just dive  in. One of the most significant gaps that manifest following any training  endeavor is the gap between what has been covered and the practice of  implementing those ideas, concepts, tools and principles. Again, I realize that  this is a teaching environment, and I'm thought of as your teacher, but I'd like for you to think about me as a trainer. I think of myself as a trainer, and in fact, I in  my ministry, I tend to do more training than teaching. So anytime information is  being disseminated, especially great commission information, my thought is not  so much what you might come to know, but what you might come to do with this, this information, these ideas, these principles, these tools, these concepts that  we've been looking at throughout this entire journey. So let me remind you of  that distinction between teaching and training. Teaching is information driven,  and the objective of teaching is the acquisition of knowledge. And I certainly  hope that a great deal of teaching has happened here throughout this course,  and that you have, in fact, gained a great deal of knowledge. But we want to add to that training. Training is implementation driven or execution driven. And the  objective of training is the acquisition of skills. So it is my hope and prayer that  you will take this knowledge that you have gained and implement that  knowledge skillfully so that you can really make a difference in people's lives.  Effectiveness. Effectiveness lies in what is done, not in what is known or even  planned. You see the fact that you have learned certain things, you have gained  certain knowledge, is not going to impact people. What is going to impact people is when you apply that knowledge skillfully in working with them, in bringing the  Gospel to their door. All right, so what are we going to do with this knowledge?  Well, the actions that you take will determine whether or not this knowledge truly becomes a skill, another way of phrasing it. What will you do with your increased Great Commission ministry knowledge. Now, let's talk about support for a  moment, as you are about to complete the requirements for this course, I want  you to be aware of the ongoing support that is available to you. First of all, you  have the eternal support of God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. God  wants you to do well. God wants you to be effective in carrying out the ministry  that he's called you to. And so you're going to have the support of Almighty God  as you move forward in in placing these new, new bits of knowledge into skill,  and taking those skills into reaching people as you create great commission,  ministry, personally, corporately, through what whatever ministry application you 

happen to be working in. Secondly, you've got the support of the Go Center,  which is the ministry that that I lead. You see my name there on the screen. You  see my email address. I want you to feel free to contact me anywhere along the  way, if you have a question, if you have a comment that you'd like to make, if  you want a recommendation of a resource or something of that sort, please feel  free to send me an email, and I will ask you to do this. If you do so, please  identify that we came in contact with each other. Although it's digital contact, we  came in contact with each other through this course that will give me an idea of  what our point of reference is, and will help me to know what you've already  been exposed to through my teaching and training. You know you also have the  ongoing support of the Christian leaders Institute. CLI, there are so many  resources available to you through CLI that I hope that you will spend some time on the website, that you will investigate what is available to you, that you will  become familiar with how to navigate through the website to grab hold of those  resources. You know, there's an infinite number of courses of various kinds and  various levels that you can utilize to help build your your knowledge and skill.  And who knows, that might be possible somewhere down the line that you might actually contribute to the Ministry of CLI as as a teacher or in some other  capacity. There are lots of ways that you could serve through CLI earning one of the certifications that become a field minister to all kinds of different ways that  CLI can support you in whatever ministry God has called you to do. So please  understand that you're not out there alone, and that we are here for you to help  out in any way that we can throughout, throughout your ministry. Now I'm going  to do something might seem a little strange, but in closing out our time together,  I had an idea that I might share something with you. Throughout these videos, I  have referred to many, many different books and resources. So I thought it  would be interesting for me to walk you through a list of the most prominent  ones that we've used so that you can get a get a look at the book, the author,  that sort of thing. And you know, obviously, if you want to order any of these  books, you could do that. But you know, I'm finding that most of these authors  and most of the information that is included in these books is very often, is  available through a website, and much of it is open source. Much of it is free  access. So I'm going to walk through this with you and expose you to what these materials are, and you can take it from there. First of all, I've used several  systematic theologies. These three are essentially my go to systematic  theologies, one by Louis Berkhof, one by Wayne Grudem and one by Michael  Horton. Now all three of these individuals are highly reliable noted theologians  and so you know, if you were ever wondering, well, of all the systematic  theologies out there, which one should I use? These would be the ones that I  would recommend that you go to next. I quoted from the book Visioneering by  Andy Stanley, in our discussion about the connection between vision and the  glory of God, remember we talked about the fact that God's priority is His glory, 

and so one of the key ingredients in any vision from God. For our churches has  got to include the glory of God. Will Mancini wrote a book called Church Unique. We talked about this in the context of how God's vision embeds itself into our  lives. So God's vision is not just something that we we do, almost as a as an  assignment, as a job, it's something that we live and church unique has a unique way of presenting that in the book, I referred to the Heath brothers in at least  three of these videos the book Made to Stick with their communications model,  success. S, U, C, C, E, S, somebody. Give me another s, okay. What s? Simple, unexpected, concrete. Credible, emotional stories, very, very interesting book to  read, and a lot of great information about communication. I share with you my  study with Prosci and change management, introducing you to the ADKAR  model of processing, change, awareness, desire, knowledge, ability,  reinforcement. This book goes into that model in great detail. I mentioned John  Kotter on two or three occasions. Kotter is known for his 8 stage process for  navigating organizational change, and that eight stage process is unpacked in  both of these books, leading change and the heart of change, a very interesting  marketplace book the time cleanse from Steven Griffith contributed to a couple  of our videos. Most notably, of course, our discussion of managing ministry time, I recommend that book. We talked about the giant worldwide as a leadership  development enterprise and the five gears, emphasizing the fact that that  multitasking gear, gear number gear number four is where we tend to spend  most of our ministry lives, but the great need for gear number five focused  uninterrupted time and how to go about getting that kind of time planned into our ministry calendars. I didn't mention too much about this book. I did refer to it  once the one thing written by Gary Keller. My comment about the from the one  thing had to do with multitasking. Gary Keller really believes that multitasking is  a great way to do a whole lot of things at once, not very well. So what he  recommends is that we zero in on one thing. Now, this might be a bit ironic, but  he talks about two one things. The first one thing has to do with purpose. You  know, what is the big one thing that is our reason for being, the thing that drives  us, the thing that motivates us, our purpose in life. The other one thing would be  our priority, so we have purpose and priority, our overarching purpose, our why?  Why do we do what we do? What motivates us, what inspires us, but the one  thing that is our priority would be, what is the one thing we need to be doing that will move us toward successfully fulfilling that purpose. Very interesting book,  similar to simple church in a little and sort of in that he talks about focus, you  know, saying no to almost everything we mentioned this book a couple of times.  Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This book includes the time management matrix, you know, urgent, not urgent, important, not important. Excellent book for overall effectiveness, but that one section of the book does a  great job. In addressing time management, then we had this very whimsical  book from Marie Kondo, the life changing Magic of Tidying Up. You might recall 

that one of her principles is discard ruthlessly. We use this in in regard to our  filing system, you know, decluttering our 1 to 31s, the files of the months and the files of the future years. Say it in six very entertaining book talks about how so  much time is lost in communication. People talk too much. They talk too long.  Meetings tend to go overboard. A lot of time is wasted in meetings. And so this is a book that really helps to streamline our interaction with each other, both in  terms of communications and in terms of holding meetings that are of value.  Simple church I mentioned a great deal Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger looking at  clarity, movement, alignment and focus. And I associated this book with our  platform of strategic initiative. You know, spiritual renewal, coupled with strategic initiative and simple church, is the book that we use as a point of reference for  strategic initiative. The four disciplines of execution, the 4DX model. Remember, we talked about lead measures and lag measures. Our tendency in the church  is to think of lag measures as targets, but in fact, it's the lead measures that  move us toward those targets. So more emphasis on the lead measures, less  emphasis on the target is the way to go. Excellent book, the leadership ladder in both book and workbook. This is a book that I have written along with my co  author, Steve Ogne who was a very dear friend and colleague for a lot of years  before he passed away, this book is about developing missional leaders in the  church. Remember we talked about the two side rails, building biblical character, building biblical knowledge, and that the six rungs from the bottom up, living  missionally, making disciples, mobilizing ministry, leading ministry, leading  leaders, and ultimately planting churches. So this book and workbook, where it's been used mostly to my knowledge is lots of churches have used this for  leadership training within the scope of their churches, making sure that their  leaders are fully ramped up in terms of their understanding of great commission  ministry or missional ministry, and leading the church in a missional direction we  talked about candor, about the ability of being able to share the quote,  unvarnished truth, to share, to be vulnerable, to be transparent, and the value of that creativity. Inc, written by Ed Catmull, who is a very high up on the executive  level of Pixar and then radical candor from Kim Scott, who I think is a consultant  to, you know, very successful businesses, helping them to gain that ability to  have very open conversation by by having expressing radical candor. Few more  of these. Skye Jethani's book with remember the teaching about abiding in  Christ, John 15, the fact that we've got to be addressing spiritual formation. We  talked about this in the context of John 15, the branches abiding in the vine. And we had those, those different ways of, you know, wrong ways of relating to God,  life over God, life under God, life from God, life for God. But the correct way, the  right way of relating to God, life with God, where we are embedded into the  Father Son and Spirit who are guiding our path every day. Now we use this book at the Go center as our touch point for spiritual renewal. So with spiritual  renewal, simple church, strategic initiative. All right, I think we're getting to the 

end here. Eat That Frog. Brian Tracy, that crazy idea of Mark Twain said, Eat a  live frog first thing in the morning and the rest of your day is only going to get  better the idea of look, facing the difficult things head on. In this case, the  difficult thing was, how do you share your faith when it's outside of your comfort  zone? And remember the challenge from my friend who said, hey, if your  comfort zone doesn't allow for faith sharing. You need a new comfort zone, so  cultivate a new comfort zone. Okay, so I think that wraps up our little walk  through reference books. So we're going to close with this remember from  session number one, the X/52 triangle, the X referring to an X factor of proactive Great Commission leadership. And the 52 which is derived from Judges 5:2,  which reads in the ESV that the leaders took the lead in Israel, that the people  offered themselves willingly Bless the Lord. So what's the combination that  moves churches forward? In this case, moves churches forward toward Great  Commission ministry. Well, leaders take the Great Commission lead. The people of the church offer themselves willingly, sacrificially to Great Commission  ministry. And when those two things happen, God's blessing is poured out on  such a church, because that church is being obedient to going and making  disciples, baptizing and teaching obedience to the commands of Christ. That's  how all this works. And all of this combined together results in what great  commission skills we take. Those skills out in the community, skilled laborers  going into the harvest, the plentiful harvest waiting to be gathered into the family of God. So that concludes our study. I thank you so much for all the work that  you've put in so far and the work you have left to finish out the requirements of  this course. But beyond this course, it's my hope and prayer, that you will be  completely fulfilled in your ministry, and that you would serve God well in a way  that is honoring and glorifying to him, in ways that reach people with the love,  the grace, the Mercy, the person of Jesus Christ, in ways that build the kingdom  of God, that God bless your efforts in the name of Jesus. Amen