Joe Pursch

Hello, I’m Joe Pursch, and this is a Transforming Moment. No doubt about it, colonial preacher George Whitfield was a workhorse. Scholars estimate that he preached 18,000 sermons in his lifetime—an average of ten sermons a week for the duration of his ministry, 34 years. It is impossible to calculate the number converted by his incessant fruitful labors, but they were in the hundreds of thousands. He traveled constantly. In a day when it took up to 3 months to cross the Atlantic in cold, leaky, smelly ships—he crisscrossed it seven times to preach the good news. He was a phenomenon in his native England, but the greatest impact of his ministry took place in the colonies. In fact, he was the first national celebrity in North America. Whitefield’s life demonstrates our need of God’s power. When evangelists visit our cities today, we can still fill a stadium, but it takes several months of organization, advertising, and planning. But Whitefield drew vast crowds with no advance organization, relying instead upon the tangible presence of God. One New England farmer in 1740 wrote in his diary, “When I heard that Whitfield had come to my town to preach, I left my plow in my field and ran with all my might to where he was. The moment I saw him, I knew I was looking upon a man clothed with authority from the Great God.” I’m Joe Pursch, and this has been a Transforming Moment

Listen to the audio here: Transforming Moments Whitfield  God’s Workhorse

Hello, I’m Joe Pursch, and this is a Transforming Moment. When a world-renowned historian was asked to identify the most influential Christian of the 20th century, he responded: “We will need a 200-year distance before we can answer that question.” We rarely perceive the greatness of epoch makers during their lifetimes. With this thought in mind, historians could well write of John Wycliffe: “Seen through the telescope of history, he was the most significant Englishman of his time.” Wycliffe’s power over the 14th century was that of a conscience captured by the Word of God. Unlike his peers, he denied that men and women must go through a priest to get to God. Instead, 150 years before the Reformation, he proclaimed the priesthood of every believer and encouraged each person to go directly to God by faith. He was the first man of his century to revive the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Each of these doctrines proceeded from his conviction that the Bible was the final authority to which men’s consciences must give an accounting. He lit a fire that was fanned by others who followed him until a young Martin Luther stoked it into the bonfire that ultimately changed how you and I found Christ. In a way, we are Wycliffe’s legacy. I’m Joe Pursch. For more, go to transforming moments.com.

Listen to the audio here: Transforming Moments Wycliffe’s Legacy

Today I bumped into a former pastor  at a ministry lunch whom I had the the chance to briefly coach a year ago. Through our reunion, God gave me the blessing of discovering how the phenomenon of transformation that occurs through coaching can run both ways, not only altering the life of the one we coach, but returning an abundant blessing to the coach as well. I only had two brief coaching sessions with this leader, centered around guiding him through one of the ministry’s more difficult shoals to navigate: should I stay or leave? Most pastors face this more than a few times in a  career, and it is perhaps most difficult when you are happy and used where you are, but a divine opportunity elsewhere beckons you. In this case, the decision related to leaving a para-church ministry position where this leader had experienced a “from the ground up” run of success, and his team was hitting on all cylinders. His issue, however, was that God had stirred his heart to return to the classic pastorate; there was new preaching that had been delivered to his soul after his time away, and he was living under something familiar in the preaching life: a burden.

So we went back to the “core of the calling” in my friend’s ministry history, and revisited the ways God had designed him for maximum impact. We clarified the question before him by asking a different question: “Since all things appear equal, where would God direct you wisely to use you well?” My friend’s answer was to move to the new opportunity, at considerable financial risk to himself and to the disappointment of his existing ministry leaders. That’s where we left things.

When I saw him today, he excitedly gave me the second chapter in the story. God had brought unexpected growth to the ministry he assumed ( it actually had doubled in size) and he happily introduced me to the new staff member he had just hired to handle the incoming blessing. Together, we rejoiced for a moment over how God had honored the move of faith and the counsel of brothers.

My heart grew full of the joy of knowing that as we coach leaders, we often prepare a blessing for our own hearts. In fact, I’m convinced there is a blessing hidden in every healthy decision we coach leaders to make. God was just kind enough to reveal the blessing in this one to me today, in a moment of “two-way transformation”.

Hello, I’m Joe Pursch, and this is a Transforming Moment. Yesterday I told you the story of how William Wilberforce, the great reformer of slavery in England, launched out on his mission because of his dramatic conversion to Christ at age twenty six. You’ve perhaps seen his story recounted in the film titled “Amazing Grace”. What you didn’t see in the film, however, was the fact that Wilberforce was physically quite deformed. He was a small, misshapen hunchback, so small in fact that as a boy his schoolmates often made him get up on a table in the school lunchroom and perform tricks! But Wilberforce decided to make people forget all about his deformity by learning to speak with passion about what he believed. In fact, more than once as he argued in Parliament for the freedom of the slaves, he leaped up on a table in front of his fellow politicians just like he had been forced up on a table as a schoolboy; only this time he stood and spoke with such passion about human dignity that his dwarfed body melted away, and for a moment, people simply saw a giant. Have you got a God-delivered message to give? Then go preach it like the giant God made you to be, no matter what! I’m Joe Pursch. For more, go to transforming moments.com.

Hello, I’m Joe Pursch, and this is a Transforming Moment. The hardest thing to handle when God takes something away from you is the fear that He may not be finished taking things away. Can you trust Him anyway? Horatio Spafford was a godly businessman who lost everything in the great Fire Chicago Fire of 1873. He sent his wife and four daughters on a ship to England to start a new life. The ship went down and his four little girls drowned. Spafford sailed to England to retrieve his grieving wife, and when his ship reached the spot where his daughters had drowned, Spafford went down to his cabin and wrote these words in his diary “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say It Is Well, It Is Well With My Soul.” Spafford’s words were later made into one of the greatest hymns of the faith we have today, reminding us that though we cannot trace God’s hand, we can always trust God’s heart. Is it well with your soul today? I’m Joe Pursch, and this has been a Transforming Moment.

Listen to the audio here: Transforming Moment 6-21