Developing Healing Growth Christian Communities

 Last week I attended a Joni and Friends FUSE Conference in Winchester-Canal, Ohio. It was filled with great speakers and a tremendous number of interesting and insightful people who are involved in supporting individuals and families with a disability. I spoke at four different Breakout sessions and we had a wonderful time of interaction.

The Sweeten LifeVIP Family Ministry is unique for several reasons.

1. We are holistic and teach people how to deal with every dimension of humanity, body, mind, relationships, family, motivation, spirituality.
2. We integrate Practical or Biblical Theology with Practical Psychology. My teaching always has very practical applications that the people can use immediately at home and ministry.
3.  We include how the entire family is impacted by disability, disease, drinking, drugs, etc. In fact, we believe that the family is THE best source of comfort and healing.
4. We believe that there is hope for some growth and change for every condition no matter how desperate the diagnosis.
5. We have many tools to equip family, parents, siblings, teachers, preachers, counselors, etc.
6. We do outcome research to see if our ideas work.

 How did I develop these things?
I attended a conference in 1969 that caused me to alter my career and focus. The conference was led by the most famous Psychologist in the history of the United States. That person was Carl Rogers, a drop out from seminary. He signed up instead for graduate school in Psychology.

Later Dr. Rogers developed Client Centered Therapy. Despite his public rejection of Christianity, Rogers kept the most basic principles of Christian theology. He gave different names to them but a careful look at his model, as imperfect as it is, is based on grace, mercy and love.It is a secular humanist approach to grace and love and it fails because there is no supernatural Spirit to empower the Counselors and Clients to live with grace and love.

Rogers was also a famous researcher on what really worked in Counseling. So, he trained hundreds of students who carried out his ideas. They were dedicated to see if their ideas really worked in practice. In the research outcome were several shocking discoveries. It was some of his statements at the that 1969 conference startled me into reconsidering my career choice. 

Another person with less fame but a lot of influence on American Psychology was in my small group. He had been an alcoholic for many years but discovered sanity and sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous. He was an agnostic who strongly promoted the 12 Steps and its basic belief in finding sanity by turning our lives over to God.

His name was O. Hobart Mowrer. He founded what was called Integrity Therapy that has a strong emphasis on morality and true moral guilt. It was he who trained the well-known Christian founder of Biblical Counseling, Jay Adams. 

What could these two famous agnostic Psychologists have to say that could impact me? can you guess why they might have been so influential on my thinking and why their approach is being affirmed by more and more research? What have I preached, taught and written about for decades?

Get my book Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty and see. This book by Steve Griebling and me distills the insights of  several decades of experience.

Cross Cultural Evangelism/Missions

Christians are very confused about these terms. Many, if not most Conservative believers, labor under the delusion that Evangelism and Missions are all outward focused. My friend Steve Sjogren and several authors have strongly contributed to that myth by talks, books and papers about "The Outward Focused Church".

The Lord used Steve mightily to build a great Vineyard congregation in Cincinnati with Servant Evangelism. The idea of SE has spread greatly around the world and it was a needed correction to the "Closed Systems" of many Conservative churches that never focused on anyone outside their group in E0 activities.

Steve's greatest innovation was Servant Evangelism that reached out with simple ways of serving people in their own neighborhoods. It was largely E1 Evangelism. It was and is effective and brought many burned out believe3rs back to faith as well as many unsaved to faith.

The weakness of The Outward Focused Church is a lack of internal Discipleship. The SE and other aggressive outward focused churches tended to attract many new believers and old relapsed believers into the congregation and they brought their addictions, compulsions, multiple marriages, anger, deep heart wounds and lack of scripture with them. An intense focus on ongoing ministries of Growth and Healing were desperately needed.

Some, including the Vineyard Community Church, Cincinnati, responded by hiring Ministers and Counselors to start Recovery Groups, Healing Services, staffed with Peer Helpers. Many others simply taught on healing with a ZAP Prayer or two and sent the newly reborn believers out to serve.  The Evangelical non-charismatic groups failed even to offer a ZAP or two but sent the babes out to be eaten by the wolves described by Jesus in Luke 10.

Worse, they had no discernible theology of Christian growth and no support system to help mentor them and help them cope with the rigors of being an outward focused Minister.  Disasters awaited them at every turn.

We have traveled in many nations and taught Missionaries, Ministers, Elders, and so forth about Christian Growth and Healing. For most it is a first. In Asia, Steve and I had a gathering of Clergy, all who had advanced training in Pastoral Care. Not one had ever heard of setting appropriate boundaries. In fact, one man said they were all taught to take no vacations offered by their church and spend no time with family and friends or recreation. That was selfish and Ministers are called to "Die to self". It is heresy but was followed stringently.

It is rare to meet a Missionary or Minister who has been taught how to live with peace and rest in Christ. It is almost always work, do good, never rest and never listen to God for inner growth. Missionaries are rarely if ever affirmed for being good husbands, fathers and friends. They are never affirmed for resting in Christ and taking a day off or getting exercise and eating well. They are affirmed for being workaholics. and trusting self works not God's work in the Spirit.

Read Power Christian Thinking and Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty to learn how to prepare people to minister overseas. 

What About Keeping the IRS Accountable?

I am an American and I try to loyally support the various parts of government. However, it is hard to support the idiocy of the IRS. This agency seems to be in a downward spiral of malfeasance and incompetence. Take a look at this interesting newsletter from Wayne at The Essex Associates in Dayton, Ohio. October 1, 2013  Lost:  $67 Million. If Found, Please Return To IRS Hoo boy...this isn't going to go over well. The IRS has seen its summer from hell extended into autumn, as a report issued September 27, 2013 by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) revealed that the Internal Revenue Service cannot account for $67 million that was set aside in a fund to help pay for Obamacare. Obamacare - or more formally, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - adds several new taxes to the Code, as well as the requirement that beginning in 2014, most individuals must carry a minimum amount of health insurance or be required to pay a sum to the IRS upon filing their tax return. From 2010 through 2012, the IRS's $488 million cost of implementing Obamcare was paid for by the Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund (HIRIF), a fund set up by the Department of Health and Human Services. TIGTA took it upon itself to conduct a little audit to ensure that the Internal Revenue Service had the necessary processes in place to properly account for the Obamacare-directed costs. Things did not go well. In the report was this little nugget: TIGTA also found that the IRS did not track all costs associated with implementation of the ACA including costs not charged to the HIRIF.  Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify approximately $67 million of indirect ACA costs incurred for Fiscal Years 2010 through 2012. Yup. That's $67 million of taxpayer dollars that were spent on, well...nobody is quite sure what it was spent on. Rather than bicker and argue over who spent the missing $67 million, the IRS has agreed to simply move on and prevent future misappropriations by implementing the recommendations made by TIGTA with the hopes that next time around, they'll have a better idea of what happened to 15% of their working budget. Wishing you many happy returns,

Wayne  PS. I wish the IRS was as lax with my income.

Evangelism in the Neighborhood

Ralph Winter, a famous Missionary overseas and here in the States taught us how to plan our work. Jesus said the harvest is big and interested in being in Christ. The problem is this: "Not enough to do the harvesting. Mobilize members to witness to the neighbors is a great idea.

Dr. Winter called that, E/1 or witnessing to the people most like you.It is another source of people that are likely to understand your faith and have some experience with Christianity. However, many attended church as children and dropped out for some reason. As a man told me last week, "The church has hurt me many more times than the world and at a much deeper level".

So, a lot of our neighbors are defensive about God, Christ and aggressive Christians. It means that the Jesus Model of outreach is doubly important for an effective witness. The Jesus Model is

1. Go as a Lamb, 
2. Offer Peace to everyone,
3. Sense any Peace that rests on them
4. Strike up a conversation with the people of peace
5. Have lunch, coffee and cakes with them
6. Listen a lot and talk little
7. If they tell you their pains and problems, ask if you may pray for them
8. If you pray, God will do something
9. Then you may gently say, "The Kingdom of God Came near you today". 
10. Jesus will rejoice with you

Sensitivity is critically important. Download the book by Steve Griebling and me, Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty.

And get the book, God Space by Doug Pollock. (Not on our web store I am sorry to say.)

Four Kinds of Evangelism

                                            Mother Teresa the Children's Evangelist

It was a great insight to have Ralph Winter from the US Center for World Mission to come to our church for a missions conference. Ralph and Roberta served in Latin America for years, reared children there and developed a fantastic Mission Training Organization. He came back to the States to Fuller Seminary and then established the US Center. They were great innovators and entrepreneurs.

Ralph taught us about the four types of Evangelism/Missions.
1. E0-Winning people from the church to Christ. There are many more converts from within the church than outside the church. The min Evangelists are Parents, Sunday School Teachers, Youth Leaders, Deacons, Elders, and Pastors.

Back in 2000 I was consulting with a large church in our area. I taught on this very concept to alert the Elders to the importance of "INWARD Evangelism". The stats are old but the trends are the same.

Look at your church and fill in the specific Evangelistic efforts under each age group. For example, E/0 efforts to children would look at the specific "in-reach" activities designed to lead our own children, youth and adults to faith in Christ. E/0 looks at those ministries/programs that are "outreach" to children, youth and adults that are in our cultural group who do not know Christ as Savior.

Approximately 17 million people become church members each year through conversion.

1.      About 7 million leave the church annually.(How can we slow this exodus?)

2.     This is a net of 10 million new believers added to the roles of churches annually

B.  Some 53 million children are born into Christian families each year. A huge number, three times the number won to Christ from outside the church.

1.      About 21 million church members die annually.

2.      This is a net gain of 32 million people in the church, if the children are converted.

3.       When added to the 10 million new members, there is a grand total of 42 million people added each year to the global church.

C.  This makes a growth rate of  approximately 115,000 people coming into the various churches of Christ each day, 365 days per year.

              1. 27,400 people each day are new converts

2.  87,700 are babies born each day to believers.

D. Therefore, "in-reach" evangelism-E/0-is critical to successful evangelism and missions. 

Go through the various segments of your church and count how many people are in them and how many come to faith in Christ each year. This will help you see where your new converts are coming from. (No converts means all you have is transfer growth.)

Respond to this by telling us where your converts are coming from. Which ministries are successful and which are not so successful? 

Read the Missions Book Climb Another Mountain by Donna Thomas on our web bookstore. 

Evangelism, Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ

I have been challenged lately to sort of "Prove" that we are a true, blue Mission Organization. One Pastor said, "You work IN the Church not out of the Church to bring people to Christ. That got my attention because we "Equip God's people to do all of those things. They are clear to me but we have obviously failed to communicate our mission, vision and strategy as well as our outcomes to others.

So here goes with my explanation. Missiologists and others interested in witnessing, sharing the gospel and winning people to Christ all over the world break those activities into four categories.

Evangelism/Mission 0-A focus on people inside the church who are not yet reborn.
Evangelism/Mission 1-People in my culture and area who share similar ideas, values, language, socioeconomic status.
Evangelism/Mission 2-People in my language group but different racially, linguistically, economically and socially.
Evangelism/Mission 3-People overseas with different languages, history, religious background, morals, ethics, etc.

Sweeten Life Systems has been involved in Equipping God's people to successfully communicate with every one of these categories. More on how later.

Read my book, Healing Release of the Holy Spirit to see how our theology speaks to every culture.

Amazing Ministry in India

Introduction: I met Pastor Shravan this summer when he was visiting with Rex Schrolluke and Ron Peake. He has a church, a children's home and a school but no curriculum. I asked if he had electricity and a computer. Yes to electricity and wi fi but no computers.  I introduced him to Bernie Stevens, founder of Power Net Global and Abydos Innovation line of Android Tablets. Now read the letter from Pastor Shravan.

Family and friends,

Greetings!

Look at the boy in the picture. His name is Pradeep. He came from a dysfunctional family. His father is a chronic alcoholic and his mom a very sick person. 

Since his Parents could not take care of him they admitted him in our Miracle Children's home. 

He never saw an a-pad in his life let alone uses it. (Home, School and Church)

Bernie Stevens (Abydos Innovations) has donated (2) a-pads (Android Tablets) to our home children.  Here is an example to show what a difference these a-pads are making.  

One day, early morning Pradeep came to my wife and asked her, "Mom, give me a tablet."

At first my wife did not understand what he meant. She thought he was asking for medicine.  

Then he rephrased it and used the word "Tab." Then she understood that he was asking for -a-pads. 

He loves to play with a-pads. 

Though the children came from a very poor background, never had access to these gadgets, they are clever enough to figure out to use them. Using the wi fi,  they are downloading new apps.

To my amazement, today one of the boys downloaded Telugu Bible free and reading the Bible in his a-pad. 

Isn’t it amazing?

I thank God for this blessing,

Pastor Shravan, India 

If you want to support Pastor Shravan and these children contact me.