Category Archives: Questions Coaches Hear

Leadership, Questions Coaches Hear

What do you think about house church?

Globally the majority of  churches meet in homes or other facilities not built to be primarily a church facility. In the developed West we tend to see church as something we go to do at a place.

There are challenges to any form of church organization ranging from 20 gathered in a home to thousands attending a church campus.  

The challenges of the house church include:

Isolation or clique.

Corrupt powerful leader or family dominating

Being shaped by an unbiblical motivation for being a church — defining yourself by what you are against instead of what you are for…OR protecting yourself from the polluted world.

Advantages include

Being able to multiply easily and at a low cost,

Deep community,

An attractive web of relationships for bringing in non-Christians as friends.

Questions to clarify in leading a house church:

What is our motive?

What is our mission?

How will we live a kingdom life of being IN the world but not of the world?

What are your thoughts?

 

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Questions Coaches Hear

Cultivate Your Friendship With the Holy Spirit

Take a small card that you can carry with you in your pocket.
Write on it, “Cultivate His presence!”
Or have it set as a reminder to go off on your cell phone or tablet every 2 hours.  For one week from 8 am to 8 pm look for ways to acquaint yourself with the one who wants to be with you for eternity.
Inspired by this quote from A W Tozer
Cultivate the art of recognizing the presence of the Spirit everywhere.  Get acquainted with the Holy Spirit and then begin to cultivate his presence. When you wake in the morning, in place of burying your heard behind the Tribune, couldn’t you get in just a few thoughts of God while your eat your grapefruit?
Remember, cultivating the Holy Ghost’s acquaintance is a job.  It is something you do, and yet is so easy and delightful. . . 
Purchase ON THE HOLY SPIRIT (365 devotions from the writings of A W Tozer) by clicking here.
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Questions Coaches Hear

How Are You Decorating Your Heart?

You learn so much about someone when you visit in their home and walk around looking at photos on the wall, decorative items brought from their travels, and the color scheme they use to leave their print on the dwelling.  NOW think of your heart as the dwelling of the Spirit.  And we hear his knocking and open the door he comes in to fellowship with us. (see Rev. 3:20)
God has give me some responsibility in furnishing and decorating the heart.  Are there any posters I would take down if Jesus lived in me?  Is there an inner complaining and judging that pulls the shades on the sunshine of his grace and mercy?  Maybe this quote by A.W. Tozer will help us realize that the spiritual disciplines are not just for me — they are for my “roommate” as well.
 Make your thoughts a clean sanctuary. To God our thoughts are things.  Our thoughts are the decorations inside the sanctuary  where we live.  If our thoughts are purified by the blood of Christ, we are living in a clean  room no matter if we are wearing overalls covered with grease.
Your thoughts pretty much decide the mood and weather and climate inside your heart, and God considers your thoughts as part of you. . . . Therefore, if you would cultivate the Spirit’s acquaintance, you must get hold of your thoughts and not allow your mind to be a wilderness in which every kind of unclean beast rooms and bird flies.  You must have clean heart.
Found in A W Tozer ON THE HOLY SPIRIT  (365 devotions selected from his writings)  (Click Here to Purchase from Amazon)
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Questions Coaches Hear

Why does the Church often ignore the Holy Spirit?

When I teach on the Holy Spirit a question I often encounter is, “Why do so many churches seem to ignore the Holy Spirit?”
Maybe this verse gives us some of the answer.
 

Galatians 4:6 (ESV)  And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be one of the disciples when Jesus was walking around?  To eat with him, shop with him, lay down to sleep in the same room with him —- how great!  Or would it?  How often do I want to be like Adam and Eve in the garden and cover up and hide.  Do I REALLY want Jesus close by ALL the time?
Since the Spirit is “the Spirit of his Son” that is exactly what is true.  To all indwelt by the Spirit — Jesus is with me and in me all of the time.  If I seek to ignore him is it because I am still trying to cover my shame and guilt?  Am I wanting to think, speak or act out of my own desire and love of self?
How would my thinking, speaking and choosing be different if I was constantly aware of His presence?  And what if I could sense his warm smile saying, “I love you and made all of the sacrifice needed just so we could be together.”
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Leadership, Questions Coaches Hear

Keep Revisiting What is Most Important to God In Your Leadership

As you read the Bible keep asking, “What is important to God?”  What is HE doing?  How is HE doing it?  What keeps coming up over and over as people make their journey through life with God?

*** Here is what is on my list

1.  Invest in people — God loves them. Christ died for them.  The Holy Spirit resides in every Christ follower.  Let a lot of other stuff go and focus on people.

2.  Pray.  Pray about everything.  Pray all the time.  Pray with thanksgiving.  God works in and around praying people.  The primary way to build ownership by people is by praying with them.  What we pray about moves to the top of our planning, spending and obeying.  Prayer drills into the heart.  Prayer takes me into a throne room partnership with the triune God.

3.  Measure my life by — making Christ followers who make other Christ followers.

4.  Settle for nothing else than the church in loving unity and celebrating diversity.  Tear down any walls and build bridges across racial and ethical divides of a sinful and broken world.  The Gospel is powerful enough to take enemies and bring them into one family… live that out!

RoyAllBlacksTMay2010-e1295093522512What is on your list?

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Healthy Leaders, Leadership, Questions Coaches Hear

HELP! I am in a place of desperate need. What is God doing?

RoyGLRetrSep2010dGod uses need to deepen reliance.

2 Corinthians 1:8-9 (ESV)
8  For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.
9  Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 

One challenging aspect of parenting is to watch our children enter a season of desperate need. — and to not spring into action to meet the need.

Yet parents who always do meet the need actually end up robbing the child of essential reliance — on God, on the resources God has poured into them, on the community of others around them.

ALSO — those who learn to humbly receive and rely on God are learning how to give (also clearly described in 2 Corinthians 1.

God is not afraid or embarrassed by our needs.

Our seasons of desperation do not threaten God’s name.

Instead they are opportunities to deepen our reliance on our God and others in his family.  Read  2 Corinthians 1:10-11 (ESV) 10  He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11  You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

Can you look back on a desperate time and now see how God used it to deepen your faith and compassion?

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Healthy Leaders, Leadership, Questions Coaches Hear

How Do Leaders Experience the Life God Wants to Give?

2011-11-14 04.43.07God wants people to be ALIVE

Joyfully alive

Abundantly alive

Grace-filled alive

Personally connected via the Holy Spirit resurrection life

So what is essential to experiencing the LIFE God wants to give?

Read Psalm 131:1-3 (ESV) 

1 O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. 2  But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3  O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.

Implied in this Psalm is a subtle truth.  The stuff essential to being alive must come from outside of me.

It is true physically.  No food, no water, no air = no life

It is true emotionally.  No love, no hope, no goals = no life

It is true mentally.  No words, no images, no sounds = no life

We are infants trusting God to give our souls what they need to live.

Leaders enjoy and help others enjoy God’s menu for spiritual life.

What are you discovering to be the water, food and air for the soul that God provides for his children?

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Leadership, Questions Coaches Hear

How Does God Encourage Younger Leaders?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMy son just turned 28.  I learn more from Mark than anyone else in the circle of my life.  He is a young biblical leader with wisdom well beyond his years.  Recently I wrote him a letter as a gift of encouragement.  WHAT COULD I OFFER AS A BLESSING TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS IN THE CHURCH?

This chapter is to be part of a book  to honor Robertson McQuilkin; a friend and mentor.

Are you a leader under 30?  Please let me know what you think?

Do you know a young leader?  Share this article with them and let me know what it stirs up in your conversation.

God is a life giving leader.  I want to invest the rest of my life in the next generation of leaders —- seeing them receiving and giving the life of Christ.

EncouragingTheChurchRoyKingJuly2013

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Leadership, Questions Coaches Hear

How Should I Lead in Such Uncertain Times?

Biblical leaders live as ones who know the future.

We are on the leading edge of the most dramatic change in human history.

IF,,, Jesus came the first time born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on the cross to demonstrate God’s love, raised from the dead, and ascended to the Father — what is next?

God is not finished.

Christ is returning.  That is the vision for every Christian.  We all shout with the apostle John, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus!”

The kingdom is real, it is coming and we have tastes of it now in every redeemed heart indwelt by the Spirit.

The kingdom is coming and the clusters of Christ followers all around the world we call the church are to be led to be an appetizer for the coming banquet.

Pray for the kingdom to come.  Lead today toward the kingdom.

What are the King’s values?

What are the King’s priorities?

What does the King love?

How does the King view his followers?

Align your leadership with the heart of the King and let nothing or no one stop you from influencing others to join you.

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