God’s Purpose…for My Life?

I just read a good post by Steven Furtick from Elevation Church in North Carolina about purpose. What’s your purpose in life? Rick Warren did a fantastic job a few years ago helping people discover their purpose and why God has someone on this floating rock.

Steven’s take is that we don’t have a choice of what God’s purpose is for our life and makes good points to back it up. Here’s the link.

What do you think?

Until next time…

Motivate

There are many things that can motivate someone to do something. I think what makes the someone do the something is the intriguing part. Why does one man achieve great heights of his success ladder while another man wallows in his pit of despair? I think many things can temporarily motivate us. Money, love, self-interest, people, feelings are all things that can motivate someone.

Napoleon said, “There are two levers to set a man in motion, fear and self-interest.” Obviously he had a way of motivating men into action. My disagreement with Napoleon comes because I think there are more than two things that has and will motivate someone. My question today is what motivates you? More importantly, what should be motivating you that isn’t?

Do you have a sense that what you’re doing matters to God and to others? We will only find satisfaction and deeper motivation in what we’re doing when we feel that we are giving our lives to a cause that counts.

Until next time…

Everything With Excellence

So I learned something pretty early on in my ministry. If you’re going to do something, do it right and with excellence…the first time. I, of course, had that reinforced many times since in different pastoral positions I’ve been in. Back to when I learned to do everything I did in ministry with excellence. The church I was at was a growing church plant with a great senior pastor. I was at the church on a Saturday, helping with the weekly bulletin and in the middle of folding a pile of bulletins. The secretary came out and saw my “less than average” job of folding and explained that the senior pastor “wasn’t going to like it.” So we had to reprint, recut, and refold the bulletins. The pastor came out later and saw the “better” job and gave his praise. Bottom line (that isn’t on the bottom), that wasn’t a one time occurance. Everything was done with excellence. And I have since been “trained”, everything I do in ministry is my best pursuit of excellence.

1. Because It’s for Jesus.
2. Because the world is watching.

And believe me, the world is watching. What makes a seeker want to pursue Christianity? It’s what he/she sees in a Christian. That’s why it is paramount that we always do our best. In EVERYTHING. So it disturbs me when I see Christians with a “sub-par” performance. Which brings me to reason why this post came to fruition. My wife and I were watching some of the tube last night and I was fulfilling my role of channel flipper. Going through the channels I came across a music video with a song I thought I recognized. But the quality was so terrible and the screen kept going to pixelation world, that I had to change it. But my interest had been peaked, as it always is when I see something Christian on television. Especially on local television. (Editor’s note: I thought long and hard about releasing the name of the show and website, but decided not to. Just know that is wasn’t TBN…this time.) So about ten minutes later I gave the show another go around. Same deal, but with teasing this time. It stayed great for about a minute and a half and then went back to pixelation. AAHHH!

My point being, if you’re going to do a ministry, of any sort, do it with excellence. Who got anything out of that show? No one. Especially the audience that I hope it was trying to reach, the seeker. There are many other sub-par things that go on in Christendom. This is just the one that made me write. Why spend all the time and money involved, for no one to get anything out of it. And the website? Not much better. I was stunned though to find out that it was a nationwide show and had stations across the US playing the show. Maybe I just caught a bad night. Now the second and final bottom line.

Whether we want to believe it or not, the world is watching us. What do they see? Everything that we do needs to be in the pursuit of excellence. So hopefully, they see excellence. Join me today in striving for better than average. There’s a whole world out there that needs to see Jesus in us.

Until next time.

Pursuing…Perfection? Where’s the Honesty?

Gallup took another poll, big surprise. No, not really. The real suprise is where clergy ended up in the 2006 Most Honest and Ethical Professions poll. Have you checked the link yet? Clergy ranked 8th. 8th! Well 8th is better than 23rd. Clergy still ranked higher than car salesmen and congressmen. Well, that’s a relief….or is it? The top five were in the medical profession one way or another. Even engineers and college teachers ranked higher in people’s eyes than clergy. College teachers? That’s a whole other blog in itself. The days of Jim and Tammy Faye are long gone, even Jimmy S. is back with a television ministry. I’ve watched it a couple times, it wasn’t bad.

Of course, for those defending the clergy #8 ranking, you can say the poll was just taken at a bad time for christians in America. The fall of Ted Haggard still fresh in the minds of Americans. And that may be true, but you can’t put the blame for this, all at the feet of one man. Maybe the Catholic Church and all it’s priests problems. Maybe, but I think you have to dig deeper. Little deeper. Just a little deeper….do you see it? Maybe the glow of it coming into focus? Maybe it’s something on more of a grassroots level. Maybe it’s just clergy in general, and people looking for perfection where perfection cannot and will not be found. I don’t think you can blame bad timing. Trust me on this one. I’m a pastor’s son and have been a pastor. Perfection you will not find, but you can find the pursuit for perfection. With the assumption that perfection is to be Christ-like, of course.

So, why the low ranking? Granted, 8 out of 23 isn’t terrible. Here’s my guess. Maybe the reason is transparence, or the lack of it. Perhaps we as pastors(clergy), board members, sunday school teachers, lay people, christians just need to be more transparent with people. Let people know that we aren’t perfect, but we are trying. With the transparence comes honesty. And of course, with honesty comes the ethics and people’s perception of you and your honesty.

Let me encourage you to be more transparent today. Let people get to know the real you. Not the ‘Perfect Paul and Polly Christian’ fascade that we put on. Let me know what you think.

Until next time.

What if Church was all about ME

My dad used this clip in a sermon one time. I just found it on the web. Talk about a great way to drive a point home. Watch the video here from Worship House Media. Then think about how great a video like that really is. Why is it great? It hits the nail on the head that so many people get so worked up about things that really don’t matter and sometimes are very selfish. Oh, sorry, you thought it was just a great video. It is, watch it and tell me what you think.

Until next time.

Bono and The Prez, on AIDS

Interesting transcript here. It’s Bono in February of this year at a National Prayer Breakfast with President Bush. I think it’s always interesting when politics and entertainment meet. What I like about Bono is that he sees his role as entertainer much differently. He understands that he is a role model and there is great responsibility with that. Of course alot of entertainers have their charities that they have founded or support. But with Bono there’s a tranparence there that you don’t see often.

What I also like is that he is plugging an organization that I have only recently become a part of. The One Campaign, the campaign to make poverty history. Here’s a good clip from the article,”God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” That’s why ChurchForward supports organizations like The One Campaign and World Vision. Every time I go to the fridge, I see a picture of a little girl in Africa that we support monthly.

Bono understands something here that I think we forget alot of times. We are here for a purpose. That purpose may not always be clear, and sometimes very difficult to see. Whatever your purpose is, I pray you continue doing it with all your might.

Until next time.

So a friend of mine got hit by a car the other day A.K.A. The Numbness

I had a friend get hit by a car the other night. Before we get too far, she’s okay. Well, let me set it up for you. It was a rainy night and my friend had an umbrella trying to cross a fairly busy street in a college town. According to her, out of nowhere a car was coming towards her and slammed on it’s brakes. My friend flew onto the hood and hit the windshield. The lady driving the car only rolled down her windows without saying a word. My friend got off the car after about 30 seconds, and stood up in time to see the car take off.

Now just stop, re-read the first paragraph and think about the story I just told you.

Now let me begin by saying that there could be alot of different reasons as to why the lady drove off. It could have been because she was old, my friend guessed in her sixties to seventies. It could have been because she was an illegal alien because she was of hispanic descent and didn’t say a word, in a town filled with illegal hispanic immigrants. And I could go on about older people behind the wheel or the illegal population in this country and border control. But I want to take this entry in a different direction. Because, you see, I think there was a deeper issue here. One that goes beyond age or citizenship.

I believe the deeper issue here is a spiritual one. One where one person can cause another lethal harm and not care enough to even get out of the car to make sure that my friend wasn’t paralyzed from the impact. Whatever the reason, the lady in the car didn’t even care enough to get out of the car and even try to communicate. What makes one do that? I think there’s a numbness there. Just like there’s a numbness in this country. A numbness in this country of not caring and being okay with status quo.

A numbness in people’s lives that can only be cured with one prescription. His name is Jesus, you know it, I know it. The church knows it. But how are we getting rid of the numbness not only in our lives, but in our communities as well. If we had the cure to the common cold, I guarantee we would be shouting from the rooftops. Yet for some reason, we have the cure to a disease that lasts much longer than the common cold, and we only want to share it on Sunday mornings. What sense does that make. Help me today, by getting rid of the numbness in your community. Get out and tell someone!

That’s it, guess I should have called this ‘The Numbness’, maybe I will.

Until next time.

Why Blog?

Why Blog?

That seems to be the question now a days. As the world becomes more and more technological, and as the church strives to be more technological, one wonders how to keep up with everything. The need for some things becomes easier to understand, a website for instance. As you read some reports saying that as many as 45 to upwards of 65% of people will find the church they attend by looking on the internet. The need for some form of internet marketing to world becomes more viable. The idea though of a church having a website needs to be more than an bus-stop on the information superhighway. The website needs to transform itself into a vital part of the unsaved seekers web experience, a minisry of sorts. Thus the idea of a blog comes into play.

Blogging should not be some mystical thing to the church. It should be, and will become a vital part of ministry by the local church. Blogging in it’s simplest definition, is a journal, a web journal. Simply one’s thoughts about a subject, any subject. If the church, in it’s never-ending attempt to stay current, wants to keep on the cutting edge, it needs to find better ways to connect with people, primarily through the internet. Blogging is probably the simplest way to do that. I have seen many different blogs from the church, mainly pastors. Some good, some not so good. Some are simply an informative blog, while others go deep into theology. What do you think is the best? Let me know, I’ll talk to you later.

EXTREME MAKEOVER – BLOG EDITION

As some of you may have noticed, the Realtor Blog just had an extreme makeover this past week, as well as IowasRealtor.com. A couple different reasons for that, some more important than others. IR.com was converted to AdamForney.com and blog.iowasrealtor.com converted to AdamForney.net. With all the changing that was going on, I had to make a decision about the blog as well as the website because the blog had been linked.

With all the different issues being brought to my attention, I decided the blog needed a makeover and different focus completely. From here on, you will still see some real estate blogging going on, but the main focus has been shifted to something a little more eternal, the church. Most know of my past with ministry being a youth pastor and such. Eventually I have to realize that it is a part of me that cannot and will not escape. You pastors out there know what I’m talking about.

Most of you know of Thrive Web Group and it’s new partner site, ThrivingDomains.com. Now everything has been brought under one roof with the label of ChurchForward. It’s a way to centralize everything and have future divisions of the company know how it fits into the whole. TWG and TD.com aren’t changing, you still get the quality service from both that you have in the past.

ChurchForward will be able to take all the services we offer in our web suite (i.e. web design, domains, blogs, consultation, etc.) to the next level as we continue to prepare the church for the newest technology that comes out and how we can reach the world through it!

Adam Forney
Founder/CEO
ChurchForward.com
“Fusing together methods to grow the church and reach your world!”