Joe Pursch

I picked up this sobering list today scanning my denomination’s resources for men. I would add a final statistic to the list: Eight out of ten men in the average church don’t have a close male friend in the faith to talk to about everything else on this list…especially men in leadership. How about you, my leadership colleague? Maybe this sad stat gives birth to the others…

According to Patrick Morely in his book “A Man’s Guide to Spiritual Disciplines”, for every ten men in the church:

Here’s the call to decision at the close of the event.

Discovering The Historical Jesus from Joe Pursch on Vimeo.

A segment from the RISE Outreach Event in Sacramento CA September 17 2011. I was privileged to be asked to describe my journey from skepticism to Biblical faith and to detail the historicity of the Resurrection.

If you’re a vocational pastoral leader, no doubt you’ve had the same experience that I have of taking a new ministry assignment, only to sail into a sudden experience of trouble early in your tenure, a squall of difficulty that threatens to turn your honeymoon into a shakedown cruise. I’ve often wondered why God allows this kind of thing early in a ministry. Lately however,as I peruse the ministry practices of Jesus, I’ve gotten a helpful insight into the question. Let me explain.

What I’ve seen lately is this: it seems that Jesus had a practice of placing His disciples just on the other side of their comfort zone on regular occasions. We might say He put them into repeated episodes of what I would call “intentional intensity.” One such incident of this is in Matthew 14. It’s the familiar story of the disciples adrift on the Sea of Galilee amid a cresting storm. What struck me as I read the narrative this time through was the less than obvious fact in verse 22 that Jesus set up this whole event. The verse tells us, “Immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side.” So the Master of the moment, the Curator of all nature, Almighty God the Son, with full knowledge of the meteorological future just around the corner, sent His disciples out into the storm anyway, with full intentionality. And He sent them out alone. Sounds like thoughtless or even cruel leadership doesn’t it? Was it really? Of course not.

Jesus knew that the depth of leadership that He intended to build into their lives was dependent on the depth of belief that they had in His authority over any and every event they would ever walk into as His disciples. That meant that He had to intentionally expose them to risk, danger, unexplained circumstances, and unpredictable events… events that only His supernatural intervention could rescue them from. In fact their entire ministerial careers would be populated with events like this in which they would need to know that the supernatural power of God in the moment could and would rescue them from danger. So Jesus, knowing that this kind of ministry life was to be theirs in the future, intentionally exposed them to dangers while He was with them, so that He could walk into each and every one of those situations and show his power. Of course, that’s exactly what happened here.

I’ll be telling you more about the story in a subsequent post, but understanding that as pastors we know how it all worked out, let me remind you of this: in order to build you for future ministry demands, the Lord will intentionally place you in times of intensity right now, so that you can road test His reliability. I believe that one of the reasons that unexpected times of challenge occur early in ministry assignments is linked to this process, this perspective, if you will.  The idea forming in my mind as I think back upon my ministry challenges and early tenure crises is this: the Lord takes me through intensity early in a new call so that I will be reminded of His power to carry me through anything that that call might engage. It steels me for even greater challenges that He knows are on the horizon later on for me in that ministry place. And, if I succeed in trusting Him to rescue me and lead me through that time of intensity before the eyes of other church leaders, an added bonus arrives for me: the confidence of lay leaders who know me very little, but have now had a chance to see how I responded early in my ministry life to a crisis in their church. If I respond well, I’ve created an understanding in their minds and hearts that this new leader, while not very familiar to them in experience, has demonstrated a depth of character that will allow them to trust him more quickly when things get more difficult down the road.

I don’t know if you’re experiencing a a real battle early in your current ministry assignment right now or not, but I know that if you stay in the ministry long enough, you’ll have that unique experience. If and when you do, remember that the Lord may be road testing your ability to rely upon Him early in your ministry assignment at that church, so that your leaders will know with confidence that you have the ability to trust God during intense times. And you’ll also be steeled in the confidence that you do have the ability to trust Christ as a leader in unexpected intensity. An intensity that was fully intentional in the  Master’s mind all along.

Five Reasons Why I’m Devoted to Ministry In His Church:

1. The church is the only entity on earth that Jesus Himself promised to build. (Matt. 16:18) Why would I want to invest myself in any lesser enterprise? The Bible speaks of a “human harvest” being gathered in by a glad Savior as precious men and women respond to His call. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

2. The church is the most privileged “people-gathering” on the planet for one breathtaking reason: it and it alone is peopled with men and women who were bought with Christ’s own blood. (Acts 20:28). Since my salvation is the most precious possession of my life, there is only one family I would want to belong to, only one people that can value the deepest treasure that I have.

3. The church is the only place where I can experience true worship, where I can connect in spirit to the realm of heaven which I was created to experience. (John 4:24; Phil. 3:3). Though the songs can sometime be stilted or saccharine and we sometimes bruise one another on our way to the altar, there’s still no other place where I can encounter Him.

4. The church is the pillar and protector of the radically divine truth that saved me and keeps me ( 1 Tim. 3:15). The driving passion of my life is to know this truth as enshrined in Scripture and revealed by His Spirit; the deepest joy in my lfe comes as I pour myself out in communicating this truth to others. Where else can I go to find the Words of Life, and give them?

5. The church is the one place on earth where the triumph of good over evil is guaranteed to occur…someday. (Matt. 16:18). I’ve tasted enough evil already in my life. I’m longing more than ever for sin and wickedness and all the suffering that they deliver to be banished forever. In His future church, I’ll have a front row seat for that finale; in His present church, I can get small foretastes of that victory every time someone surrenders more completely to Christ. Every true church of Jesus is a place of redemption unfolding, little by little, all the time. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that in a world like this?

Toni Birdsong of sticky4Jesus.com lays out some great stuff about the influence for the Gospel that we can have online. Want to play a part in the harvest field that’s literally crying out for the elevating influence that a pastor can have? Look no further.

Where there is no wise guidance, the nation falls, but in the multitude of counselors there is victory. ~Prov. 11:14

by Toni Birdsong
No doubt, more pastors are jumping into the social media conversation. Still, many more have yet to “get it.” If we could, we’d (respectfully) give pastors some straight talk about the untapped power of social networks for sharing the gospel and their role in the equation. If you are a youth pastor you can multiply the importance of this post by 10.

So, dear pastors, here are 10 things we’d love for you to understand about social media:

1. Technology + influence = power. The church needs a voice at the online table locally, nationally and globally. Political systems are being influenced (and overthrown) via social networks. The church needs to be in the conversation influencing the culture with God’s word—not the other way around. This influence needs to start with our pastors, our leaders.

Read more…

“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”   Philippians 3:13

Where do your past and future meet? Why, every single morning, of course. Every morning you face the challenge as a leader of putting the past into perspective and the future into focus. The trick is to keep either one from distorting the other.

How do you as a faith leader put the past into the best light? By understanding that the best features of the past, your successes and satisfactions, were all delivered to you by God’s grace and not by your own ingenuity. That tames our “achiever’s pride”. How about the worst pages in the story? They too were authored by the same God, and He gave you the grace to move through them into today. That tamps down our reflexive regrets.

And the future? Every morning we are tempted to go back to the past to find our future; back to the familiar, the tried, the predictable. As a leader in midlife, I have now had my share of experience with the idea of returning to the past. I’ve been asked to return to an old job or two, and to return to a geographic locale I once lived and worked in. Tempting, yes, but on the whole I wouldn’t recommend it, because that’s not where the future lives. The Scripture says His loving-kindness is new every morning for a reason: we’re meant to step into new challenges where we’ll need it.

Leader, which way will you be heading out of the door of decision this morning?

Click below for the audio:

Transforming Moments Wesleys Death

“And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”   Luke 15:21

Sometimes the very last thing in the world we feel we deserve is comfort, and yet here in this parable is God, eager to pour the greatest comfort, the comfort of forgiveness, into the life of his most sinful son. He cannot resist doing so, because as the Scripture says, God is love , and love never fails.

Spiritual leader, apply this to your relationship with your people today. How can you overlook their frailties, their ragged sins, and even their offenses against you, and move toward them with forgiving comfort today? If they’re like you (and they are), comfort is the last thing they feel they deserve. Surprise them with your eager desire to give it to them anyway.

The striking thing about this parable is that it is the Father who runs to the son. Runs in eagerness, runs in joy, runs in full-out desire to bring His son back to Him. It occurs to me that often as spiritual leaders, particularly after some experience of inner hurt at the hands of those we shepherd, we find ourselves running from people instead. But there’s no hope of joy in that direction.

Remember… the Father ran.

1. The Great Commission was more about depth than it was strategy or technique.

2. Discipleship is not optional.

3. Being spiritually transformed is the primary and exclusive work of the church.

4. The evidence of being a follower of Jesus is following Jesus.

5. Believing the right things is not enough… true belief includes behavioral verification.

6. The most important question the church faces is who in its midst is saved and who is not (see #5).

7. Discipleship is a choice, we don’t drift into it or amble our way half-heartedly down the path of obedience.

8. We have accepted a non-discipleship Christianity and we must confess this sin to the Lord.