Watch Your Words!

Proverbs 18:4 “The words of a person’s mouth are deep waters, a flowing river, a fountain of wisdom.”

I opened up my Facebook page and cringed. A fellow pastor had posted an inflammatory statement on his Facebook page. I think he thought he could challenge people’s thinking and perhaps change a few of their minds on an important topic. What actually happened was for the next three hours there was one negative post after another as people argued with each other on his thread. Lots of anger was displayed. Very few attitudes that would reflect Christian values were displayed. If his goal was to prove a point, he failed. If his goal was to stir up controversy, he was amazingly successful. If his goal was to speak a word of the Lord and advance the cause of Christ, I would also consider his post a failure.

I think pastors must be particularly vigilant when they use social media. When used correctly, social media can be a powerful tool in advancing the cause of Christ. When used incorrectly, it can set back several month’s worth of ministry in a matter of minutes.

While I do not consider myself to be a social media guru, in my experience I’ve learned that best use for social media includes:

1. encouraging others with positive words and Bible verses
2. staying in contact with others by expressing genuine concern and care
3. promoting worthwhile ministry events
4. sharing humorous moments in my life

I find that most people respond positively to these four things and enjoy interacting with me about them. A long time ago I determined that social media was not the place to discuss controversial issues or to get too preachy to the masses. There are other avenues in which we can discuss controversial issues and push our more preachy ideas. Social media is simply too brief to say all that needs to be said regarding controversial subjects. It misses body language and context, which often is just as important in our communication efforts as the words we use.

While I think this is good advice for everyone using social media, I think this is particularly important for ministers and key lay leaders in the church to understand. Social media can be a great ministry tool, if Christian leaders use it correctly.

Lord, help us use the technology You have enabled us to create for Your glory. Amen.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett serves at the Executive Director of the Baptist Convention of New England. He has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Our Schedules Can Be An Idol

Ephesians 5:15-16 "Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil."

Time is perhaps our most precious commodity. For a growing number of people time is actually more precious than money. Many of us fill our days running here and there trying to keep up with our overcrowded calendars. Sometimes I wonder if Americans have made an idol of being busy. We tend to think that the busier we are, the more important we are. We often equate activity with productivity. Too many people have come to believe that their level of activity equals their level of value. Christians are as guilty of this as our non-believing friends.

I think it is a mistake to equate our schedules with our self-importance, our productivity, or our value. Sometimes we are busy doing all the wrong things. Sometimes our activity actually accomplishes very little because we approach it in such a disorganized way. We should most definitely not equate our level of activity with our value as a person, because our value comes not from how busy we are, but in the fact that we are created in God’s image, and that Christ died for us to be reconciled to God.

This does not mean that we should throw out our calendars and become couch potatoes. What it means is that we should evaluate our schedules and determine if there are things we can cut out to make our lives less busy so we can focus on the things that matter most. It means we must evaluate how our schedules are impacting the things that matter most, such as our spiritual walk with God, our family health, and our overall personal happiness. At some point we must ask ourselves if the things that fill our schedules really have meaning to us or did we just sign up for them because everyone else did. Do those activities really add value to our lives or are they merely attempts to convince ourselves that we are important? We may not like all the answers we come up with when we ask ourselves these questions, but in the end, the result will be a less hectic life that is full of value, meaning and purpose.

For those of us who are Christians, we should determine that before we add one more thing to our schedules, we should take time to ask if that activity fits God’s plan for our lives. Will that activity draw us closer to Christ or push us farther away?

I recall a young family in one church I served as pastor. The wife was a Sunday School teacher. At the time the husband was not a believer though he did come to church fairly often. As their children got older, the children became involved in a variety of extra-curricular activities. The mother volunteered for a lot of extra activities at the school where the children attended. She also volunteered for leadership positions in two community groups. None of these various activities were bad. In fact, some were quite healthy and it was good for their family to be involved in them. But as they continued to add things to their calendar, their schedule got so full that the family’s church attendance went from almost every week to about once every 6-8 weeks. At the end of the Sunday School year the mother gave up her Sunday School class because she was just “too busy to do everything.” I vividly recall her husband’s comment after she resigned. He said, “I think she is giving up the wrong thing!” I found his comment quite insightful since he was not yet a believer at that point in his life. Clearly something needed to be eliminated from her calendar, but it should not have been her service to the Lord. That family eventually dropped out of church altogether and is no longer active in the life of any church. Overcrowded schedules pulled them away from their faith, and did little to enhance their family bonding. All it did was overstress them. Sadly, I see it happening more and more in the typical American Christian family.

We must decide what is important to us. Then we must allocate time, our most precious commodity, to reflect our values. If we fail to do this, we will find ourselves busier than ever but with little or nothing to show for it.

Lord, help us evaluate our schedules and make adjustments that are healthy for our spiritual walk and our family life. Amen.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett serves at the Executive Director of the Baptist Convention ofNew England. He has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Does Church Membership Matter?

Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us watch out for one another to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.”

The first church I served after I graduated seminary ran between 200 to 250 in worship on Sunday morning. But we had over 900 members on the roll. That means we had three times as many members missing on a typical Sunday than we had present. While some of those missing members were elderly and no longer able to attend, hundreds of them were simply missing in action. Some of those missing members were still in the community and would occasionally show up for Easter or Christmas services. But many we had not seen in years. I am not sure the FBI could have found half of our missing members! Yet they remained on our membership roll. I remember wondering why we just didn’t cross all those names off our roll.

Though at the time I would not have wanted to admit it, I suspect that the reason that we kept all those missing members on the role was because it sounded a whole lot better to say we had more than 900 members than to admit we only had 250. Years later I look back on that experience and realize that the goal of our church was not just to add names to the roll, it was to multiply Christ-followers through evangelism, discipleship and missions. Adding names to the roll did not accomplish that goal. For a name on a roll to have meaning and purpose, the individual represented by that name has to be really involved in the church and growing in their faith. Our church had a lot of names on a roll, but most of those names meant little to the life and vitality of that church or to accomplishing the mission God had given that church. As harsh as it may sound, those names were empty of meaning and value.

There are millions of people across America who have their names on the roll of a church but who do not attend with any degree of regularity. My encouragement to those who find themselves in such a situation is to return to your church, roll up your sleeves and become active. Not just active in the organization of the church, but active in fulfilling the mission of the church. Be the Christian you claim to be! My encouragement to those who are in leadership of a church is to ask yourselves if it is time to meet with your long-term inactive members to determine their real commitment to Christ and the mission of your church. If they are no longer committed to the mission of the church, remove their names from the roll. Not out of anger or spite, but out of integrity and honesty. Membership should mean something. But if we continue to carry more names on the roll who are not active than who are, we have devalued membership and made it mean little. We must fix this. It might make our churches smaller on paper, but is highly unlikely to reduce the number of people actually involved. In fact, I think it will increase the number of those who are involved because when inactive members are challenged to become active again, some of them will rise to the occasion and accept that challenge. And that is good for both the individual and the church.

Lord, help our connection to our church be meaningful both to the church and to us. Amen.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett serves at the Executive Director of the Baptist Convention of New England. He has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY