4 reasons why you'd better discover and deliver the one big idea as a communicator

Rick Duncan
Aside from receiving an anointing and filling from the Spirit of God, what is your biggest challenge in public speaking? Finding content? Overcoming nervousness? Maintaining interest? Staying passionate? Sharing illustrations?

These are all important factors. But not the most important.

When we are giving a presentation / message / talk it's important to establish and then relentlessly communicate one compelling big idea. All the other ideas we share should flow out of that one. When teaching a paragraph from the Bible, we have to study the passage so thoroughly that we discover what the one big idea was for the original audience. Then we are ready to teach the idea - the truth - to our people.

Why is this so important?

1. The big idea makes us relevant.

Once we discover the big idea we can communicate it in a compelling way that actually connects with our audience. We must seek to understand and care about the hurts, fears, and hopes of our listeners. Once that happens, them we can "marry" the big idea to the real needs of our people.

2. The big idea keeps us focused.

If we don't uncover and communicate the one big idea, then we will simply be stringing together a bunch of unrelated, rambling comments about the text. And we will doing a real injustice to the Spirit's inspiration through the author of the text. Scripture doesn't violate the principles of literary structure. Paragraphs in good literature have a subject and a complement - one big idea. There were not two or more big ideas in a paragraph for the original audience and there are not two or more big ideas in a paragraph now.

3. The big idea helps us study.

Once we know the big idea, we can find content, illustrations, applications, and supporting texts that truly support the one point we are seeking to make. Identifying the big idea will make it easier to eliminate the material we will inevitably find that won't help us make the point.

4. The big idea gives us passion.

Once we know the big idea and connect it to the needs (felt or unfelt) of the audience, our passion will grow. We will care. We will clearly see that what we are saying matters to the people in the room. Scattered, rambling communication lessens passion. Focused, pointed communication increases zeal.

We want to hit the hearts of people with a sniper-like rifle shot of truth, not the scattered buckshot approach of a running homily method of communicating.

Finding the big idea and connecting it to the people in relevant ways is sometimes easy but often tough for me. I need the prayers of God's people to communicate God's word in clear, practical, and relevant ways. Please pray for me and for anyone you know who seeks to communicate God's truth.

Question: Apart from gaining the anointing and filling of God's Spirit, what do you think is the most difficult task in communicating?

How Does Accelerate Measure Success?

I was asked the other day, "How do you measure success with Accelerate?"

To determine this we must look at our mission, who we serve, what they need and our vision

The Accelerate Mission is to:

    Attract, inspire and equip Kingdom-minded leaders and

    Connect them so they can

    Collaborate with their time, talent and treasure so we

    Accelerate the creation of healthy, reproducing faith communities resulting in

       transformed lives and transformed communities

We Serve: church planting pastors

Our Vision:
Healthy church planting pastors developing healthy reproducing churches resulting in

transformed lives and transformed communities

What Church  Planters Need:
Common Best Practices for Equipping Church Planters
1.  Assessment
2.  Church planting training
3.  Internship, residency, or church planting experience
4.  Sponsoring churches involved in helping the plant
5.  Administrative and strategic support
6.  Coaching/mentoring relationship
7.  Peer-to-peer relationships
8.  Ongoing training opportunities
9.  Exposure to available resources

Measuring success:
Our success will be through raising up the leaders and structures that make possible the equipping, encouragement and accountability new pastors and churches need. These are illustrated in the Common Best Practices for Equipping Church Planters. We provide some of these through coaching networks and some through creating collaborative efforts with other organizations.

We can measure:
1. Number of coaches raised up to lead coaching networks
2. Number of coaching networks
3. Planting pastors participating
4. Number of church planting churches and sponsoring churches
5. National network involvement in city
6. Survivability rate at 4 years of participants
7. Financial sustainability at 4 years of participating churches
8. Number of new churches that reproduce in 4 years

Anecdotal responses from pastors and leaders will illustrate life, church and community impact

How worship smashes the idol of lust

Rick Duncan
"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (II Corinthians 3:18).

Recently, a friend trusted me enough to share with me his struggle to be free from lust. He hates the fact that he can't consistently overcome the temptation to linger long in looking at what he knows will bring momentary pleasure, but lasting shame. He knows it's hurting his marriage.

We talked about the normal approaches in the fight to overcome lustful thinking. Accountability? Check. Read Every Man's Battle? Check. Prayer? Check. Tell your spouse about your struggle to gain accountability and support? Check.

All these tools and techniques are good. They help my friend for awhile. Then he falls back into the sin that he wants desperately to overcome. His spiritually informed willpower to win isn't working.

I said, "What if your problem isn't really lust, but idolatry? Maybe what you really want is to be valued, prized, pursued, desired, and empowered. What if your fantasies run deeper than the simple rush from lust? What if what you really long for are things like being affirmed, respected, touched, received, and accepted? The lusting is rooted in the fantsy that some beautiful woman values you so much that she seeks intimacy with you. What if the problem isn't lust, but idolatry?"

An idol is something that we put in the place of God. It's something that we love, serve, and allow to dictate our behavior more than God. In the case of lust, it's not the picture that's the idol. It's the sense of vitality that comes from the fantasy accompanying the lust.

In the Old Testament, the saints of God were praised when they took down the high places of worship and smashed the idols. We have to do the same. We have to be idol smashers.

How? We repent and replace.

We receive the grace and mercy that comes from the gospel of Christ. We embrace the fact that Jesus already paid the price for our forgiveness when He died on the cross in our place for our sin. We refuse to live in shame. Past, present, and future lust has already been forgiven.

Then, we realize that that the most real, most powerful, most imporant Person, Jesus, truly values, prizes, pursues, desires, and empowers us. The King of kings and Lord of lords, Maker of heaven and earth, the Sovereign God, the Beautiful One actually affirms, respects, touches, receives, and accepts us.

We realize that we don't need the fantasy from a fake flickering image to feel vitalized. We are valued by God. Knowing that we have great worth to Christ makes lust become cheap and tawdry in our eyes. Why would we settle for a fantasy when we could have reality with God?

While reading books about freedom from lust might help, I suggested that my friend read books about Christ and the gospel. I suggested that he try The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller and Hunger for God by John Piper.

Ultimately, it's worship that sets us free from lust. It will be a lifelong battle to worship the way Jesus deserves and the way that sets us free. We will have advances and set backs. But as we prize Jesus more and more, we will be set free. We will be able to say, "Christ is my all in all" and "For me to live is Christ."

We can learn to meditate on how Jesus truly values, prizes, pursues, desires, empowers, affirms, respects, touches, receives, and accepts us. We can learn to love Him more for all that. We can turn our eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth, even lust, will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Question: What are other idols in your life that you have seen worship smash?

The Church is Not the Hope of the World

from Shawn Lovejoy's blog

I believe I first heard Bill Hybels say it: "The church is the hope of the world." I have actually repeated it many times myself. However, in recent years, I've had a change of heart. I simply no longer believe it's true. I don't believe the church is the hope of the world. Yes, Jesus said, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it," but He also said, "On this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16: 18 NIV, emphasis added). In other words, the church is not the hope of the world. Jesus is the hope of the world. He has simply chosen to extend hope through his people, the church. Without Jesus, the church has nothing to offer anyone. Jesus is the chief cornerstone of the church. Without the cornerstone in place, the house falls. For a church to be effective, Jesus must be at the center of it.

Jesus said, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in
them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15: 5). Did you catch that? The church can do nothing apart from Jesus living through us. We might have crowds. We might have influence. We might make a lot of noise. We might have tons of religious activity going on. We might come together for services every few days. However, Jesus said that apart from him, no long-term spiritual fruit will be produced. Apart from Jesus, we've got nothing. That's what He said!

We don't really believe that though, do we? If we really believed that Jesus was the hope of the world, wouldn't our lives and ministries look much differently than they do? If we really believed that Jesus was the hope of the world, wouldn't we spend more time with Him?

Wouldn't the Gospels drive more of our lives and our teachings? Pastors, wouldn't we preach this Sunday with more urgency? Wouldn't more Christians be Going? Giving? Sharing their faith? Wouldn't we talk less about what's going on in our churches and more about what's going on in our relationships with Jesus?

The church is not the hope of the world. In fact, the church is not even the church unless Jesus is living in and through it! The church without Jesus is a cult. Period. Jesus is the hope of the world. Jesus is the only Good News! Would you be willing to go out and live like you believe that today?

Excerpt(s) from The Measure of Our Success: An Impassioned Plea To Pastors, available today on Amazon.

Make sure you take a few minutes to check out Shawn's interview about his new book with Ed Stetzer on his blog.

Shawn Lovejoy

Shawn is the Lead Pastor of Mountain Lake Church; Directional Leader of churchplanters.com; and author of The Measure of Our Success: An Impassioned Plea To Pastors.

How to pray for the people you love

Rick Duncan

I'm guessing you're like me when it comes to praying for others.

Sometimes, you feel led to pray for people but you just don't know how or what to pray.

I have found that it is helpful to pray the scriptures.

In Philippians 1:9-11, we learn how a great spiritual leader, Paul, prays for a church he planted. Why not try praying this prayer for someone in your circle of influence for the next week or so? Pray with expectancy. And watch what God does. Write down how God answers.

Here is the prayer put together from multiple versions. Simply pray one phrase as it's written and then, to keep this from becoming vain repetition, pray that phrase in your own words to God.

Here's a prayer we put together from several versions of the Bible. What if you prayed this for someone for the next 7 days?

***

Father in Heaven, I humbly come before You to pray for __________.

May his/her love flourish. May his/her love keep on growing more and more.

Give __________ an ability to love well with knowledge, understanding, discernment, and wisdom.

Help him/her make right choices, choose the best, and approve what is excellent.

I pray that __________ will grow in purity and blamelessness to be ready for the return of Christ.

Fill his/her life with good deeds – with the fruits of righteousness – that come through Jesus.

May __________ truly live a life that will bring much glory and praise to God.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

***

(A prayer based on Philippians 1:9-11 using phrases from the English Standard Version, the Message, the New Living Version, God’s Word Translation, Contemporary English Version, and the New Century Version.)

Question: How do you find the words to pray for someone when the words are hard to find?

Thoughts on Worship and Worship Leaders

Over the past 3 years I've visited about 50 new churches around the Washington Baltimore area. These are observations I've had:
1. Across the board I've felt that the worship leaders and bands have done a good job with the music. They sound good which inspires the people. I have been encouraged.

2. I have felt that the A/V quality in most churches has been very good in spite of the challenges that many portable churches experience.

3. Most worship leaders have learned to lead the music well. Unfortunately they have not been trained to lead the people well. The result often means there is a good performance from the front and most of the people in the congregation just stand there and do not sing. At one church I had a hard time finding anyone singing.

4. When a worship leader does not express a personality from up front he/she does not draw the people into the worship or endear the people to the leader. In so many evangelical churches we have swung the pendulum so far that the worship leader does not connect with the people at all.

5. Most worship leaders are tenors or baritones. Most men are bass singers, especially on a Sunday morning when then are still draggy from sleeping in. The result is that most songs are sung in a higher key than I can sing. So I drop a register or keep skipping bank and forth between registers. Or I don't sing. One church was led by a lady who is a low alto. They had the opposite problem. The singing was so low that it created a hushed sound as apposed to a positive energetic sound. Then I visited a church with both. One song was sung in to high a key and the next song was sung in too low a key. LOL

You may think I am being too picky here. But paying attention to the key that a song is sung in does affect how well the people enter into the worship experience.

We have Accelerate coaching networks for senior leaders. Now several worship leaders are expressing an interest in starting a coaching network for them to connect with and encourage each other. I am praying and looking for an experienced worship leader to facilitate and coach a group.

If you are interested in an Accelerate coaching network for worship leaders let me know.