The power of influence

In my sermon yesterday I talked about the power of influence. My text came from the story of the woman at the well. After her encounter with Jesus she returned to her village a transformed person. She told all who would listen about her encounter with a Jewish man at the well, and how He had changed her life. Many in the village went to see Jesus for themselves, and when they returned to the village many of them were professing Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world.

But what would have happened if the woman had not shared her story with anyone? No doubt, some would notice that she was a changed woman, but they would not know how the change occurred. It was her testimony, her influence, that caused others to believe in Jesus Christ.

You and I have influence over other people. That influence may be negative or positive, but we do influence the ones with whom we come in contact. People watch what we say, they watch what we do, and those words and actions have influence.

Chances are you became a Christian because of someone's influence in your life. It may have been a parent, a spouse, a co-worker, a child or someone with whom you had a casual acquaintance, but there was something they said, something they did or the way they carried themselves that made you think there might be something to Christianity. You began to explore the claims of Christ for yourself until one day you came to believe in Jesus Christ and came to a personal faith.

Now, as Christians, we have an obligation to influence others. Jesus said we are to be the light of the world. The word translated light means a reflected light. We are to let the light of Jesus Christ shine through us so others will be drawn to Him.

Studies show that the average Christian will not lead a single person to faith in Christ in his or her lifetime. We hide our light. We only let it shine in church but not in public. As a result, many will never have the opportunity to trust in Jesus Christ.

It is a sobering thought that of all the methods God could have chosen to spread the Good News about Him, He chose to use imperfect people like you and me. It is also a sobering thought to realize that we may be the only person who can influence someone to explore the claims of Jesus Christ and come to faith in their own lives.

Who are you influencing today?

The mission field around your church

 Approximately 100 churches in North America close their doors each week. Many of these are smaller churches. For years, they have watched their congregations grow smaller and grayer. Income dropped as the attendance decreased. It became increasingly more difficult to find pastoral leadership. Often, savings accumulated over the years was depleted in an effort to keep the doors open as long as possible. Eventually, the lights were turned off for the last time.

The question that must be asked is: why? Why did the church have to close? One report I've read is that a minimum of 50 percent of the people in every county in the United States is unchurched, and in some counties it can be as high as 90 percent. We now know that the United States is the largest English-speaking mission field in the world surpassed only by India and China. Churches do not close due to a lack of work that needs to be done; they close because they have lost their vision for ministry.

When a church's primary focus is on survival and not mission it is well on the road towards closing. God never intended His church to be concerned about surviving. The church is called to mission, and if a church has no mission beyond survival it has ceased being a church. It may be an organization that meets weekly to sing songs, pray and hear a message, but it is no longer a church.

Many struggling churches may not have to go more than a mile from their building to find enough unchurched people to double their membership. The problem is that they do not know the people who live within a mile of the church. The larger problem is that those people do not know that church exists.

Back when I first began serving as a regional minister I was scheduled to meet a pastor search team from one of our churches. The small church was located in a rural area. Other than an initial sign on the highway, there were no signs directing anyone to the church. This was before GPS devices were common. I was hopelessly lost and even stopped at two houses to ask if they could direct me to the church. Neither family was familiar with the church. It was now dark, and I was already a half-hour late for the meeting. I decided to turn around the first place I found and try to find my way back home. The place I found to turn around in was the church parking lot. That church was no more than a mile from either of the houses I had stopped for directions!

Your church is in the midst of a growing mission field, but those individuals are not going to come to you. For too long, we've unlocked the doors of our church buildings on Sunday morning and said, "Y'all come." Nobody came. The Great Commission tells the church that we are to GO into the world and tell people about Jesus. In order to do that, we've got to connect with our mission field, build relationships with them, and earn the right to tell them about our Lord.

How can you best do that in 2024? I encourage you to discuss that in your next leadership meetings.

When God calls

I'm currently reading a very interesting book that compares Calvinism and Arminianism. The book is Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities by Roger Olson, a professor of theology at George W. Truett Seminary. He is one of today's leading Armenian theologians and wrote the book to help people better understand the differences between these two theological systems. It is slow reading but quite informative. Last night I read the following passage.

"From the Armenian perspective grace restores free will so that humans, for the first time, have the ability to do otherwise - namely, respond in faith to the grace of God or resist it in unrepentance and disbelief. At the point of God's call, sinners under the influence of prevenient grace have genuine free will as a gift of God; for the first time they can freely say yes or no to God."

This wasn't anything I didn't already know, but it took me back to the time I was saved. For years I had been enjoying life. I believed there was a God, but in many ways I lived as if He didn't exist. A couple of things happened that brought me to take a closer look at my life and my relationship to God.

I was working in a factory, often seven days a week. Our eight-year-old daughter attended Vacation Bible School that summer due to the generosity of a neighbor who took her. On Friday I came home from work, and at the dinner table she told me that day at VBS she had asked Jesus Christ into her life. The pastor told her that if she was serious she needed to come to church Sunday and make a public profession of her faith. I was scheduled to work that Sunday, but when my wife asked what I was going to do I said I guessed I would go to church. When the invitation was given, she never hesitated but walked to the front of the church.

At the same time, I found myself in trouble for some decisions I had made. I was facing possible legal problems if I didn't make amends, and time was running out. I admit I was scared. Some people I worked with were committed Christians, and I asked them if they had any material on faith. I kept thinking if I had enough faith I could get this problem resolved. I read everything they brought me!

One day I found myself alone in our mobile home. The pressure was getting to me. I know now that pressure was God calling me to Him. I got on my knees in front of my chair and prayed asking God to come into my life. Of course, He did.

That wasn't the first time God had ever reached out to me, but that was the first time I was ready to receive His grace. I've wished a thousand times I had done so earlier in life, but it took those two events to help prepare me to accept God's amazing grace. That happened back in the late 1970s, but reading a passage in a book in 2020 made it all seem like it was just yesterday.

I've often preached that we need to be ready to reach out to people when the windows of opportunity are open. My window that summer was wide open. Those windows are open the widest when someone is going through a difficult time as I was. Two events: my daughter's salvation and my own pain prepared me to hear God's call on my life.

I encourage you to look for hurting people and tell them about the grace of God. Maybe you will help them experience the same thing I did in my living room.

Watch what you say

Last week I posted an article on this site about Christians using social media in ways that bring damage to their testimony and the Christian faith. Specifically, I wrote about how Christians are as guilty of posting inaccurate information and slandering those who disagree with us as non-christians. Today I want to address another issue that concerns me about Christians and social media.

The next day I unfriended two Christians on Facebook because of vile language that was contained on a post they shared. This was not their writing, but it was a post they had seen somewhere and felt the need to share it with their friends. The post contained a word that has no place in Christian dialogue. This was not the first time these two individuals had shared questionable material, but this one went over the line of acceptability. I had been uncomfortable with some of their posts before, but this one was the final straw for me. I immediately unfriended them.

Some Christians have no problem with using profane language. I do. It's not that I am shocked by it. As a young man I cursed a lot before becoming a Christian. I've had unbelievers intentionally curse in front of me looking for a reaction. They never got one. But, when Christians are unable to express themselves without using profanity it does bother me. I also do not want it on my social media pages because I don't want anyone thinking that I condone it.

As Christians we are to reflect the person of Jesus Christ in all we say and do. I realize that we all fail to do this as we should. I am certainly not pretending to be perfect in this endeavor either. But, it seems that it should be a simple thing to control the words that come out of our mouths or the ones we write for all the world to see.

Non-christians judge the gospel we proclaim based in large part on the lives of those who claim to believe it. They are quick to point out any inconsistencies they think they find. It may not always be fair, but it is a fact. It should be noted that this is not only true for Christians but for anyone in the public eye. In recent weeks there have been numerous social media posts made by entertainers and politicians that have been removed but not before someone got a screen shot. Critics of these entertainers and politicians used these posts to attack them and their views. Non-christians do the same with the things we post, and just because we remove the post doesn't mean that it goes away. There's always a chance that someone has taken a screen shot of something we post before we can remove it.

Is it really that difficult for Christians to communicate without using profane language? The answer is no, if we care what others think about the things we say and write. I encourage you to think about who will read what you post on social media and what they will think about you after they read it. If you still want to use profane language I guess you're free to do so. Just don't send it to me. If you do I'll feel the same freedom to not receive anything else from you.

Class reunion #50

This past weekend was our class reunion. It has been 50 years since we graduated from Madison Consolidated High School. We had a large turnout of about 130 people attend the graduation some coming as far away as Australia and Thailand. I had not seen some of these folks since our graduation.

I had been asked to do a memorial for our classmates who had passed away. There were several. I recalled how each of them had impacted our lives in greater or lesser ways during our four-year high school experience. I also reminded my classmates of some of the joys and even the heartaches we experienced during those years.

Some of our teachers also attended, and I commented on how blessed we were to have teachers who cared about us. Sometimes they cared more than we cared about ourselves. They were dedicated to the teaching profession and more than willing to help any student who sought help.

It was a fun evening, and it also reminded me of the fact that we are all influenced by the people we come in contact with. The people with whom we work, those with whom we attend church, our neighbors and family, and even some with whom we have little contact all impact our lives. We are shaped by those relationships, and we have the opportunity to shape the lives of others through those relationships.

Some interpret the Great Commission as an order to go out to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I think a better interpretation is "as we are going" we are to share Christ with others. In other words, as we go about our normal lives, as we interact with others in the various aspects of life, we are to be ambassadors of Jesus Christ. We are to reflect Him to others in our conversations and other interactions with people. We are to model Christian values and principles in all our interactions. And, when we have opportunity, we can share the Good News with those ready to receive it.

Turn lemons into lemonade

Several years ago our small church invested in new sound equipment. We had it professionally installed, and it was working great. At least we were no longer picking up the trucker CB radios as they went down the highway about a mile away! A few weeks later someone broke into the church and stole the equipment.

We reported it to the police and to our insurance company. Someone from the local paper heard about the theft and contacted me for an interview.This was a great human interest story about a small, rural church that had its new sound system stolen just a few weeks before Christmas. It made the front page of our hometown newspaper.

A few days later I was contacted by a television station in Louisville, Kentucky who wanted to interview me for their news program. The reporter came to our church, interviewed me, and a day or so later our church was on their news broadcast.

One of the questions that was asked was how this theft would affect our Christmas. My response was that our sound system had been stolen, but no one could steal Christmas. We would proceed with our usual Christmas plans. I remained very positive throughout the interview

The insurance company quickly got us a check to replace the sound system and we were able to have it installed before our Christmas program. What was really amazing was what happened a few days later. I received a call from a security company who had seen the story on the news and offered to install a security system in our church at no cost. It turned out to be a great system!

In January the sheriff's office called to tell me they thought they had located our sound system. A local farmer had been walking along a hill on his farm and saw a bunch of equipment that had been thrown over the hill from the road. I took one of our church leaders to the sheriff's office and we were able to identify it as our equipment that had been stolen. Evidently, between the local paper and the Louisville news story the equipment was too hot to keep so the thieves tossed it.

Having our new sound system stolen was a real downer. My first reaction was disbelief which quickly turned to anger. However, remaining angry wasn't going to solve anything. Our congregation was understandably upset as well so it became important for me to lead us in getting our focus back in a positive direction. I was very proud of our church at how quickly we were able to do that. As a result, we not only got the system replaced in time for our Christmas program we got a new security system as well, but ever more importantly, we had the opportunity to grow deeper in our faith and have a positive witness to our community.