A Challenging Future for Spiritual Leadership

So I remind us again as ministers of His Gospel, we won't be reviewed by our peers. Our popularity won't matter a bit. Remember, He is not looking at quantity but quality.

One of the most disturbing things about ministry today is that when I talk with 99% of pastors and I ask how their church is doing, they usually respond with an answer in these 3 areas: 1) weekly attendance 2) budget 3) facilities. Yet none of those three are mentioned in the New Testament. Folks, our religion began by meeting in caves and upper rooms, not million dollar buildings and performance halls. In Jesus' 7 Letters to the Churches in Revelation, we do not know what one of them was running on a Sunday morning. Laodicea could have been running 25,000 people but it did not matter because they were about to vomitted out of God's mouth for apathy in their lives. On the other hand, Smyrna could have been running a few hundred but were faithful and in tune with God. God was reviewing not the quantity or numbers but the quality of ministry.

My ministry will be reviewed one day by what kind of people are at ELEVATION? What are we making of the Church? We have too many people who have revisionist theology and are trying to revise what the Church is. No one has the right to change the Church of Jesus Christ! We did not die for it, He did! And I want to say to leaders: you do not have to reinvent it! Just do ministry as the Bible says to do. God doesn't have to have your creative thought.

Look at Acts 2:42 again. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Now we have made it how can you get people for 60 minutes in a building one day per week? That is not a church. That is a meeting of people for one hour. We are inundated with seeker friendly nonsense that will not wash when we stand before the One whose eyes are like fire.

We can't let our meetings last more than an hour today because people are watching the clock to get out to go home and watch an NFL game that is 3 hours or an NBA game game that is 2 1/2 hours. Does not someone think this is not what God had in mind when He started the Church?

I have committed my life to raising up people who are not satisfied with a 3 point powerpoint sermon and no power. But I am telling you I see people today who do not want to be in the presence of God. It amazes me. We have shortened all of our meetings, prayer meetings have died out of the church, and we are now divorcing in the Church at the same rate as outside. Out of the people professing Christ, last year evangelicals had the highest divorce rate in history.

I mean what does it matter what the numbers were if the people don't want to be in the house of God? I had a pastor friend tell me recently that he couldn't have a prayer meeting at his church because no one would come. Are you serious? People will pay $15 for a Christian concert but for free they won't come into the presence of God and call upon the name of the Lord! Every revival of which we have record has been characterized by great teaching? Great eloquence? NEVER! Always by prayer. When His people pray, people and things change. Is prayer our steering wheel or our spare tire?

Am I the only one embarrassed in America as a pastor when I hear pastors get mad at the political stances of our day? "Isn't it terrible we do not have prayer in schools today?" Are you kidding me? We don't have prayer and revival and hunger in the Church! The Bible never indicates they had prayer in the Roman Empire in schools, but the Church was effective because they had prayer meetings in the Church!

If the people don't want to be in the presence of God, then what are we doing? How sound is our doctrine? People don't want to be faithful to God's House but they are renting filthy videos and spending more time facebook stalking and youtube browsing than seeking God. It's time to get off facebook and get our faces in the Book!

Call me a fanatic but I am sticking to His Word. Why would God send people to heaven when that is the last thing they want to be is in His presence? They may believe in justification by faith but I am just asking, if they are looking at the clock the whole time during worship, why would heaven be heaven to them? Why would they want to be there?

It is time for us to humble ourselves and find out now. There is a very challenging future for us as a generation. All my wife and I will be able to present to the Lord is the quality of these people we pastor. Are they holy and living in the Word every day? Do they have an appetite for the things of God and prayer? Are they filled with the Spirit of God? Not how many were coming on Wednesday night. Not how many came to your big event. I don't want for my life to go to waste!

I don't want to find out at the end of the day and have God ask me, "Who asked you to build that?" Well that is the way other churches did it Lord. Nope. It will not work. We must build according to His blueprint. "By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ." - 1 Corinthians 3:10-11

Let's look again at 2 Corinthians 3:1-6:

"Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

Paul said you Christians are the result of my ministry. God wrote by the Holy Spirit not with ink on tablets of stone but by His Holy Spirit with tablets of your hearts because God had made him a competent minister.

The greatest need in America is for a revival to hit the Church so that we would become competent ministers of the New Covenant! In other words, it is possible to not be a competent minister. I have a question for us. What could possibly stand against a Church full of Jesus Christ? Paul had nothing yet he was so powerful because God had made him a competent minister! Paul was not complaining about Nero in the New Testament. Let them do what they want but let the Church arise he was preaching! Incompetent on the other hand: I could get people into a building once a week but not into God.

In Acts 11:21, multitudes were turning to Him and yet they knew nothing of Jesus beforehand. There were no choirs, no buildings, no services. How did they do that?

I tell you friends, I would rather live just one year with God's hand on me than 40 years just shuffling my feet! More to come later this week.

Fighting in this war together,

pcraig