Theological Ethics w/ Gary Deddo

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity. And today we are blessed to have Dr. Gary Deddo as our guest. Dr. Deddo is a professor at Grace Communion Seminary and has been participating in GCI and GCS since 2012.

And today for our first episode of 2025, we are going to begin exploring our theme of kingdom living through exploring particularly the course of theological ethics that Dr. Deddo teaches at Grace Community Seminary. So, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Deddo.

[00:01:35] Gary: Thank you, Cara. It’s a privilege to be with you and to address your audience.

I’m very happy to talk about the seminary and in particular this class that we call Theological Ethics. But that is a very important topic and very complex as anytime you hear the word ethics everybody gets stiff and maybe a bit worried. And so, it’s a huge topic.

It is complex, complicated in a way, but that’s what you need a class for, right? You need a class to have time, to have resources, to think and to talk and interact with others and to work things through, to pray things through, to study scripture that’s relevant to the topic. So, it really does take a good amount of time and some discipline.

And usually, a class helps us be disciplined. You’d make out plans and say I want to read this book, or I want to look into this. And then, of course, you don’t. But a class helps because you’re working with others. And so certainly this topic, theological ethics, does call for that.

And so usually we have a great time. This is, I think, the fourth time we’ve had the class, and it’s always been very productive.

And part of it is, it does take time, and it does take effort. And there’s so many complications, and there’s also many pressures on us to try to discern what’s good, what’s true, what’s right, what I ought to do. And a lot of times, of course, we’re thinking about what others ought to do and that’s certainly part of it, but we have to start with ourselves.

Yeah, we have a class on it that lasts twelve weeks and people put in about, oh, twelve hours a week for each of those weeks to work things through. We have a couple of textbooks.

But the topic itself is important. We call it theological ethics. And the reason we qualify the word ethics with theological is because not all thinking about right and wrong, not all teaching about right and wrong, is theological. That is, it doesn’t connect with who God is or who a particular god is or who the Christian God is.

And in this class, we want to link together who God is — the God revealed in Jesus Christ according to Scripture — and then see what does that have to do with how we live our lives, how we discern what’s good and right, how we avoid being deceived or used, or use others or treat others poorly.

So, you want to connect together theology, which is our knowledge and faith in the living God, and how that then yields fruit in our lives: what we do, what we think, how we act, how we react. So, it’s a theological ethic.

Often without the connection between who God is and trusting in God, we just do what’s right because we just have a feeling, and then we think about it later. Or we’ve heard someone say something, and it sounded good to us, so we went with it. Or sometimes it’s out of guilt or fear or anxiety that we decide to act a certain way, react a certain way, and there’s not a lot of prayer; there’s not a lot of thought.

Or later on we realize, wow, I didn’t take into consideration that. Wow, if I would have realized that, I probably would have decided differently or reacted differently or decided differently.

We want to bring our theology, our faith, our worship, our prayer together with what we think and decide and how we react and reply, and yes, even sometimes how we vote, what that adds up to. So, it’s a theological ethic. In the biblical way to talk about this comes up, actually, in Romans chapter 1. And then Romans 16, the last chapter as well, Paul says his whole ministry is to do nothing other than to bring about the obedience of faith. That phrase, the obedience of faith, that’s another way to talk about what a theological ethic is about. It’s trying to discern and prepare ourselves to do what is good and right according to God’s will and way and God’s heart and mind, and to do that out of trust or faith in the living God, as if God is real, as if God is present, as if God is active, as if God knows better than we do, and what’s the best for us.

And that’s why we hear in His word, we’re given directions as to which way to go, which ways to decide. So, we obey by faith, out of trust. So, it’s a part of our worship relationship with the living God. Rather than just stoic, “I have to do it,” or there’s a rule about it, so I better, or someone’s going to be unhappy with me, or I’m going to be unhappy with myself.

Rather, the only obedience — a response to God’s will and way and heart and mind — is to trust Him. So that’s another way to talk about the obedience to God. The obedience of faith is another way to talk about a theological ethic.

So that’s what we’re looking into. And of course, you can’t figure everything out in a class. That’s not the purpose of it. And anybody would already immediately recognize, no, we’re probably not going to do that. And we don’t. The point really is to be better prepared. That’s the point. How can we get better prepared? And how can we find others who can help us get better prepared? And how we might be able to help others get better prepared to hear the Word of God, to trust God, so that we’re free, and we see the good and right of what God is calling us to do. We’re getting better prepared by coming together, praying together, studying Scripture together, and reading others who have worked through the matters of good faith and evil, right and wrong better and worse. So that’s what we do in the class. And that’s what theological ethics is.

So, we could talk about also what it has to do with, you asked about the practice or the nature of the kingdom of God. That’s another part of it too. Where do ethics really come from?

As we know, a kingdom is a group of people. Jesus talks about He has come, and the kingdom is present among you when He comes. So, it’s about relationships. And of course, ethics isn’t anything …

[00:09:35] Cara: Yes. And I thank you for sharing that. And I took this course a couple years ago and what you’ve shared, I think that as someone who’s taken the course that I want to highlight for our listeners is like you said, we can’t learn and cover everything.

We can’t learn and cover everything in just one course. But what I found really helpful and practical is that we really dove into the process, right? Like how do we approach it and go about. And as you said, that’s the theological approach to ethics. And so, as you said, the preparation for that.

And so, I think that is clear with how that really has to do with our theme for 2025 of kingdom living. it really informs how do we live and how do we move through this world, right? Like you said, how do we discern as we do that?

And so, I wonder because it seems like this course and my personal experience, and as you describe it, has a very practical impact on our lives as disciples of Jesus.

What if you had to name just one — and I know that can be difficult. What would be one major takeaway from this course that would develop a student’s practice of kingdom living if they’ve taken the course?

[00:11:17] Gary: Yes, a lot of it is just dealing with Scripture that really directs us in our lives as to what’s important.

Obviously, we start with the love of — the two commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. So just dealing with Scripture and all that it says. What does it say about yes, caring for the poor or loving your neighbor? All these kinds of things that are there. So, part of it is just a survey of Scripture that starts from the Old Testament and then runs to the New Testament.

But it does focus on sorting out the nature of love, and I think there’s lots of confusion about that. And that’s a problem. Everybody says you ought to be loving, and you ought to be kind. But the thing is, what do you mean and what does that look like in a particular situation?

And it turns out that in the New Testament, for instance love really requires knowledge. You have to know something in order to be loving. You have to know something about what’s true. You have to know something about what is good. So, we explore that so that your love is not an unloving love or a less than good kindness.

But there’s a lot of very simple understandings of love and kindness that float around. And everybody thinks you can instantly and immediately know what it is. So, we delve a lot into what it means to love a neighbor, and in various situations, what it might add up to.

And so, it’s more than just following rules and things. Even rules you can find in Scripture a lot of times is asking, if I want to love my neighbor in this situation, what do I do? What if they’re on a death bed? What if they were in a car accident? What if they’ve lied to me? What if I’ve lied to them? Things like that. So, a lot of it is sorting through what is loving and kind.

I suppose another word that we looked into is the notion of justice. There’s a lot of talk about justice and social justice, but what is it? What does it look like? How do I as an individual deal with it? Or how does a government deal with it? And those are two very different issues to be sorted through because what governments could and should do can be very different than what an individual or a local church should do.

So, we look through a lot of these very basic terms that, at first, seem easy: love, kindness, justice. And then try to see what it really adds up to and prepare for situations that might arise. So that’s a lot of kind of focusing on these key issues, key matters to sort through much more carefully and be better prepared.

[00:14:39] Cara: Excellent. Thank you for sharing that Dr. Deddo. And absolutely, I can see that very practical and tangible connection to this idea of kingdom living. And as we said in the opening, this podcast in particular is focused on best ministry practices for GCI leaders in our context of church ministry.

And so, I’m wondering how does a theological approach to ethics — because as you said, not all approaches to ethics are necessarily theological. So how does a theological approach to ethics impact or inform and shape our practice of ministry?

[00:15:34] Gary: The two do need to go together. So, one of the things is we often if we’re involved in ministry or serving others, sometimes that involves setting things up, organizing things, just making decisions, or sometimes encouraging people to do or participate in certain things. But on what basis do we motivate people to do something, to get involved, to invest themselves in an activity, in a relationship, in a program, really in anything?

And it’s very easy to go to Scripture and just pull out particular verses to do this and to do that. You can take a big, huge one, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Wow. That’s a good thing. You can motivate people by just issuing kind of imperatives and ones that you find in the Bible. Love your neighbor. “If you have love for one another, then people will know you’re my disciple.”

So, love one another. So, you can just tell people things to do sometimes they’re ethical things, what are good and right to do and avoid wrong, bad, evil, harmful things. And other times they’re practical, but always we’re often in situations of kind of motivating people, but it makes a difference how you motivate people, just barking commands at people doesn’t really do it.

It creates a kind of stoic response. “Okay, I have to do this because someone is requiring it of me; God or the ministry leader is requiring this of me. And so, I better, if I want to stay in their favor.” So, we can just call these categories imperatives. Do this. It’s a command, an imperative, it’s imperative that you do this.

But that’s really not how all of Scripture works, any of Scripture works, because the word of God does not work that way. Jesus doesn’t work that way. Paul doesn’t work that way in his writings. So, to go back to the Philippians, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” You have to — the reason why, the motivational frame is because “God is at work in you, both to do and to will, according to His good pleasure.”

Oh, you mean I can count on that? I can count on God being at work in me and to give me the will and to do what’s good and right, and to be, do, be involved in what the things God is involved in? Wow. If I can count on that, I guess I can think about working out my salvation. How do I live out my life under the kingship of Christ, under his leadership?

And everything in Scripture is put together that way, even if you go back to the Old Testament. What we hear before we get the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 is “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, so you shall have no other gods.” If you miss the first part, you just hear, you shall have no other gods. You’re left hanging in midair. It just becomes an act of pure will. I’ll get out [inaudible], but that’s not how it works. God says, you can count on me. I’m the kind of God this takes you and has taken you out of the wilderness, sets you free from Egypt. That’s the kind of God I am.

All right, so you’re not going to have any other gods. Which God would you like? The fly God? How about the frog God? What did they do for you, right? None of these gods, they’re not even going to be tempted to worship those gods. None of those gods delivered them. They all enslaved them.

Part of ministry practice is providing people the proper motivation, which is to trust in the living God.

James Torrance, for instance, who I studied with, called these the indicatives of grace. They indicate the God who is gracious, the character, the nature, the purpose, the mind, the heart of God that we see and hear in Jesus. God is like Jesus all the way down. So, when you see, okay, so that’s who I’m obeying.

That’s whose instructions I’m listening to. That’s the one I’m trusting in is God. I am going to attempt to do this, to react this way, to behave this way to make this decision rather than that. So again, it’s another way to get at the obedience of faith. So, in ministry, we want to put forward what builds faith.

It’s talking about who God is, the indicatives of grace. This is who God is, this is what He provides. He is over us as the Father, He’s with us as the Son, and He’s at work among us and even in us by the Holy Spirit. This God is giving us all this. We can trust Him for this. Okay, I guess I can forgive my enemy, because God is overseeing all this.

I’m not just doing a naked act of will stoically, but it’s the obedience of faith, or it’s obeying a command, an imperative, because I’m trusting in the indicative of grace that tells me and reminds me, again and again, which I need to be, of who this God is.

And I can tell the truth because I’m trusting God to oversee this. I can do what is good and right. Because it is good and right. Because I know God knows more than I do. And He wants the best for me. He’s not just making up rules and saying, do it just to prove yourself. He’s saying this is the way, walk in it. It’s the way that leads to life.

Oh, maybe God knows something about life. I don’t know. So, I think I’ll go in that direction. So, it’s really ministry as motivating people on the proper basis so that it frees them to obey, frees them to do, frees them to participate. It frees them to serve others in the way Jesus wants us to and enables us to, otherwise we’re hanging in midair.

And so often I see preachers and things on podcasts and others just barking commands, but they don’t give them anything to go on. There’s no fuel in the tank. And that sets people up, either to just give up or just be stoic and hardened. And that’s not living under the lordship of Christ and all. So I think that would be, and in theological ethics we talk about that motivational framework for why we live the whole of the Christian life in a way that shows who Jesus is as Lord, as Savior, as Redeemer, as the one who loves us and the one who provides for us and gives us that great hope. So maybe some of that would be useful.

[00:24:10] Cara: Absolutely. Because as you say that, and you talk about the role of motivation in the practice of ministry, often that does come up, and how, when we have a theological basis and approach to ethics, how that really transforms or it’s foundational to how we approach how we exist in our ministries and community. And even as you’re talking about that motivation, I can’t help but think that completely transforms even our journey of discipleship, right?

[00:25:02] Gary: Yes, it does. Yeah. It gets down to the bottom. It’s foundational.

[00:25:06] Cara: Yes. Yes. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think that this theological approach is really key in our practices of ministry as leaders. And part of that for us and in GCI is that we have this vision of Healthy Church and healthy leaders that we’re wanting to grow continuously towards health ongoing, again and over towards the healthiest expressions that we can, as God enables us to.

And so, I’m wondering what practical implications or practices does this have for our living out of this vision for the development of healthy leadership and healthy church rhythms in our local congregations?

[00:26:12] Gary: One time I heard a pastor talk about the idea is there’s two elements to the Christian life. One is being a faithful and the other is being a healthy. You want faithful members and leaders who are also growing in health. In some ways, then growing as a disciple and taking time to sort through issues about the nature of the Christian life and therefore the nature of all our relationships, first with God and then with others, those that are near and those that are further away.

But it really depends upon — you can’t really get out ahead, help others get ahead of where you are. God can use us, of course, always uses us more than we think or know, thankfully because He is faithful and maybe that’s one of the places to start: a healthy leader knows that God is more faithful than we are.

He’s not dependent upon us. It’s always, to make it happen, He’s inviting us along to participate in what He’s doing, which is much greater than what we can do. So, we should never kind of collapse and think somehow — and again, sometimes how we get motivated, how we are being motivated, or sometimes we motivate others improperly is we make it sound as if God can’t be any more faithful than we are.

If that’s the case, it’s over. Forget it. We’re done. We’re cooked. We quit. Throw in the towel. No, God is always being more faithful. That’s why we even bothered to be involved in the Christian life, in the Christian community. And if we’re exercising leadership, it all comes out of our growing relationship with God and knowing the fullness of His word, not just little bits and pieces and not taking them out of context. And not laying them on others out of context, like the imperatives apart from the indicatives of grace. This is who God is, so this is why we do this and why we follow this.

Looking deeply into these things — someone God calls to be a little bit out ahead, perhaps just to be ahead just because they have the time to do it, and they have the motivation that God has given them, or they have the available resources. But if there’s going to be any kind of leading in a good and right direction or way, somebody has to have discerned, especially when there’s differences of opinion.

And so here, when we get to the ethical issues, what I find is there’s not enough space, times, and places for people to talk and think about these things, and for some people to get ahead just by thinking and praying and reading and finding the best resources, in this case, those who are also teaching, thinking theologically about how to live the Christian life, do what is good and right and true.

So, somebody has to be out ahead of that, being better prepared, not to boast, but of course to enable others to catch up. So, a healthy leader, first of all, has to be trying to be faithful, that is, trust in the living God and know His word and then sort through things, especially if there’s complications.

And of course, we see this in the election years and things like that. There’s the potential of difference and differences of opinion, and sometimes they can be strong, and sometimes there’s just confusion, or people are afraid to talk to one another.

Usually, God uses someone who’s better prepared, or hopefully better prepared, then to advise people or to route people to the best resources that are available on this topic or that topic because there’s just a lot of pressures, right? Individuals, when we’re talking about doing what is good and right, true, and yes, truly loving, truly it’s not easy to discern, and there’s lots of pressures.

So, we can help one another, but usually when it’s complicated and sometimes, especially it’s sometimes it can be very personal, right? These decisions that are being made can be very personal. And should I tell somebody, my employer, about another fellow employee who is being dishonest, who’s stealing or cheating somehow? These can be, and more personal than that, especially when we get to the sexual issues, super personal.

So that takes a lot of preparation and sometimes it actually takes research. You have to know what’s what. You can’t just hear something somewhere saying, oh, that’s the truth. Yeah. The media, and of course, especially if you go to social media, you can hear a million different things. Who’s going to help us sort it through?

This is what healthy leaders can participate in by putting aside time and effort to get prepared to help others. But it has to start with, not out of panic, certainly not out of pride or arrogance, but a desire of trusting God to be faithful and saying maybe because God is faithful, I can be prepared myself and then enable others to sort through some of these difficult things and maybe to help people not just react to each other, but sort it out.

That would be something that might be relevant here.

[00:33:18] Cara: And that gives us, I think, a lot to think about for our listeners. It gives me a lot to think about, even coming back to reflect on the course materials right after the fact, for myself. And I do encourage our listeners to consider enrolling in this course at the appropriate time next week that it’s offered. Speak with your teams, your church leaders, your ecclesiastical supervisor and consider and explore if this is something that is, in terms of the course at GCS, that is appropriate for you. And if not I would still encourage you, as Dr. Deddo has been suggesting to us, to work alongside your fellow leaders to put aside that time to work together in that preparedness, because I think what we can take away from even just the short time in this episode is that theological ethics matter.

They matter for our day-to-day living as disciples. They matter for our health as leaders, and they matter for our health as a local church and our continued growth in that. And so I encourage you all to continue to press into this, to continue to explore and sort out, alongside one another in community with those who, maybe as Dr. Deddo said, have spent a little bit more time sorting out so that we can come alongside one another in this journey of a theological ethic.

I would ask, as we typically do with GC Podcasts, that we would end in prayer. I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today, Dr. Deddo. This was a very rich conversation. Like I said, you’ve left me, and I’m sure our listeners, with a lot to think about. And so, I would ask, would you be willing to pray for our churches and our pastors and ministry leaders in GCI as they pursue this exploration and embodiment of a theological ethic?

[00:36:05] Gary: Sure. Thanks, Cara. It’s been a pleasure and privilege to be with you all. So, let’s join in prayer for a minute here.

Gracious God, we are so grateful that we know You. We have seen, especially in Jesus Christ, Your goodness, Your truth, Your light. The fact that You are a god of life and that You have come to give us life, and life abundantly, and to not only show us a way to live, but You are the way, as we trust in You. You are the way, the truth, and the life. Lord, where would we be if You hadn’t made Yourself known to us and come to us personally and addressed us as Your children, as son and daughter. Lord, where would we be?

We’re so grateful. We’re so thankful that we have Your word preserved for us. We’re not lost. We’re not just pushed and shoved around by every wind of doctrine, or wind of ethic, or wind of a social political agenda. Lord, we come unto You, and we put our trust in You now, even as we offer ourselves to You — not dead sacrifices, but sacrifices full of the life that You have given us that we might live under Your word, live in the light of Your love and trust in Your goodness and the goodness of Your ways.

I thank You that You’ve provided us with each other throughout GCI and GCS and beyond as resources. Lord, it’s those whose lives You’re working in and among, and Lord, we trust You for being the good shepherd. We’re the dumb sheep. We need Your light. We need Your word. We need to hear Your word through others who know You well and You have prepared.

And yeah, we trust You as our good shepherd that You know how to get through to us, Your dumb sheep. You can correct us, You can guide us, You can lead us, You can protect us. And so, we look to You; we trust You in all these ways. And for all those who are listening to this podcast, we pray for Your presence to be with them, for You to speak through Your word to them and to provide the support and encouragement and to protect them from deceit from being, manipulated by guilt or fear or anxiety.

That Your word would break through, Your presence would be with each one especially if they’re facing challenges right here, right now today, even as they listen. That we may praise You and glorify You and celebrate Your faithfulness that even yields faithfulness. Amen.

[00:39:52] Cara: That’s all we have for today. So, until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thanks for listening to the GC Podcast. We hope this episode inspired and equipped you to lead with health and purpose. We would love to hear from you. If you have a suggestion on a topic or if there’s someone who you think we should interview, please email us at [email protected].

Looking Forward with Your MAP w/ Hector and Juan Carlos Barrero

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. Hello friends, and welcome to this episode of GC podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in the context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host Cara Garrity. And today we are wrapping up our series on processes and practices of discernment, strategic planning, and ministry action plan. So, for the final time this year, let’s welcome back Pastor Hector. And Wonka, who helped us with this series from the start of the year all the way to wrapping it up at the end of this year.

Thank you both, Hector and Juanca, for joining us for this entire series.

[00:00:56] Hector: Thank you to you, Cara.

[00:00:58] Cara: No, thank you. Your insights have been invaluable to us. So, like I said, this is going to be our last episode for this series that you guys have shared with us from the start of the year to the beginning of the year, your journey of using a ministry action plan.

And at the end of the year, one of the things we do is look forward to what’s happening next year. The end of the year is usually, in that last quarter, that time where we’re putting together our Ministry Action Plans for the coming year.

And I would love to learn from you all. What are you guys going to do differently this year as you develop your ministry action plan?

[00:01:40] Juanca: Yes, Cara, definitely. Listening more, to have active listening. Sometimes as leaders, we have a very grounded perspective and that could be sometimes a challenge for the team members. At the same time, we have to honor the vision and the mission that we have written in the past.

And so, with this, what I’m trying to say is: try to be sensible. With all the different voices on the team, there are different personalities. Some personalities are just creative and like fire. Other personalities are very cold, but at the same time, they have great ideas.

And sometimes when discussing these ideas and in these meetings the outgoing personalities tend to be more vocal, tend to have more space, let’s say. And those voices that are maybe more introverted, those people that are more introverted tend to be left out a little bit.

Because they are so understanding. They are just like, “Okay well, he said that, and she said that, so let’s not — I was going to say this, but…”

Anyway, it’s listening a little bit more. In the 5 Voices, it is especially important to listen, to hear the creative people. At the same time, is this really going to work? Is there really a budget for this? The guardians are always going to be like, no, this is not going to be possible.

We love this structure, and there’s this ongoing conversation that is going to happen in this meeting. So, we have to be in nurturing more mode. We have to be soft; we have to be gentle. We have to be humble, right? Because we all want to participate, and sometimes with words we can just hurt or say things that are not right. We are only human.

But in these meetings, something different that we have to implement is listening more to the people because they have great ideas And it is, after all, the Church of Christ. We are the body of Christ. Everybody should have a voice. Everybody’s part of the body of Christ with different gifts and different perspectives.

[00:04:40] Hector: I will add that Paulina and I — I consider myself and I tell this to my wife, Paulina, that we are motivators. We are to be very enthusiastic, motivating people to do things. The things that they have in mind, we have just to guide, not to impose, but to guide people because they have so much to give, and we want to motivate them to give their best.

And this is my role to be a motivator, to tell people you can do it! Go ahead. I will be supporting you. I will be praying for you. I will give you resources if it is possible and needed.

So, Paulina and I are motivators. Now I see that as my role. So, what are we going to be doing differently? More motivators toward the people who are working in the Avenues. To be in contact with them and motivate them, inspire them to do their job in the congregation.

[00:06:00] Juanca: Yeah, and it’s definitely an art, Cara. It’s definitely an art to not judge. To not judge! Because there’s a difference between — in teaching, there’s a difference between evaluation and assessment, right? In evaluation, you just judge the quality. This is bad. This is wrong. You’re doing it wrong, and the results are insufficient.

And sometimes, regrettably, we are like that. We are like, “Guys, this is not working. You did this in the wrong way, but we support you,” at the same time! It’s a contradiction. You can fall into this contradiction of saying to your team, we are here for you. But at the same time, you’re criticizing them. You’re judging them in an implicit way. They’re not going to be motivated. So, it’s an art to make an assessment. To increase the quality and say, for example, to the team, let’s try this again. We’re going to take a different approach is a challenge.

It has been a challenge for me because when I have, for example, a group in charge, and I’m trying to tell them that something is not quite right, I have discovered with my wife, Bibi, that we have to be extremely careful with that. Otherwise — we just have to remember that people are using their time, they’re voluntary, they’re volunteering for the mission of Christ. And it’s not a company; it’s not an enterprise. It’s not as if you own them; it’s not as if you are just telling them what to do. They have to be independent, and we want them motivated for Christ’s mission.

And so that is a challenge. And that is an ongoing process that we are reading about, informing ourselves on how to motivate people now. Because the first reaction that you have when someone is doing something that maybe isn’t the best way to do it, or something like that, is to correct immediately.

But there has to be an assessment. In Spanish, the word “assessment” doesn’t have a 100 percent accurate, clear definition in Spanish translation. But in English, it’s clear the difference with an assessment and evaluation, and we need to do more assessment than evaluation.

[00:08:46] Cara: Yeah. I appreciate what you all shared because, I think, you’re right that it’s definitely an art to do that in relationship, to have that dynamic of motivating as well as in relationship, speaking to how do we want something to grow and to develop over time. And I think the way that you all are talking about it really highlights the ways that we can be team-based in our ministry planning and the way that we can be honoring to the priesthood of all the believers in our ministry planning.

And not just [say], we’re the leaders, I’m the Avenue champion, so you’re going to do what I tell you to do. Or I’m the pastor, so you’re going to do what I tell you to do. But really that space, as you said, where all the voices are heard and that can be motivated to participate according to their giftedness and their time while also wanting us to continue to grow in excellence, right?

That part of the discipleship is always ongoing. So, our participation in Jesus’ ministry is also always going to be growing and developing and changing in response to the environment. And so that’s part of the art of our job as leaders: how do we help facilitate our folks to respond to that and what the Spirit is doing without being like okay, let’s do it my way, right?

Yeah, that’s excellent. That’s excellent advice for our folks. We really need to bring all those voices in.

[00:10:36] Juanca: Yeah, definitely. That’s a challenge. That is always going to be a challenge. Sometimes, well I don’t know, something is not going the way that it was supposed to be going. And there are two ways of communicating our perspective, right?

The first way is that you say, “Wait a minute. I’m the pastor or I’m the leader. I’m the champion. So, let’s not do that. And let’s continue on this path.” And so, people are going to be immediately turned off a little bit because they had plans. They had meetings and conversations about that.

And that’s not the way. And regrettably, we have sometimes to learn in that way just crashing against the wall and just analyzing afterwards, like this was not the way of handling this.

Maybe the perfect way of doing that is saying, “How do you guys — how will you feel changing this and that based on what you have planned and let us know about that.

So, there’s an ongoing conversation; there’s going to be communication and you’re going to hear your team. That’s important to hear them out, not to draw conclusions just because you’re the leader and something didn’t go the way it was planned.

So, it definitely is an important factor. We also have seen other congregations in Latin America having that issue specifically. And we know of challenges in some congregations that some people have just lost the motivation because the leaders are too strong and not lenient, not flexible. Maybe not lenient, but flexible is the word. Flexibility is important because you give them a little bit of air to breathe in their plans and what they want, and then you maybe guide them back to the vision or mission. Because we are all creatives, and we are sometimes, I don’t know, like disperse.

But it is important nonetheless to hear them out and to just have an assertive communication with your team.

[00:13:00] Cara: Yes. And that’s the second time, Juanca, that you’ve mentioned coming back to the vision and mission as well, and the artfulness of those conversations with your team.

And I think that’s important that you’ve named that because when we keep in mind that we have the vision and the mission as guide posts for our local congregations, sometimes that can help us when we’re working our teams, and maybe somebody is leading a ministry and or a ministry event, and they want to do something a little bit different than we would, we can ask is this just because Like I think they should do it different or is this a contradiction with our vision and mission. And those are two different things, right?

As a leader, we need to have hard conversations if our folks are wanting to lead ministry in contradiction with our vision and mission. But that’s very different than if they’re just wanting to do things in a different style than we think than we would or try something in a different way than we would normally do it.

Because like you said, everyone has their own creativity. So, I really appreciate that you said the vision and mission has that role in those conversations. Thank you.

And I wonder, too, as you’re looking forward to next year’s Ministry Action Plans, you talked a little bit about what you’re going to do differently. What goals for the congregation are changing and what are staying the same as you move forward into the coming year?

[00:14:44] Juanca: So, I think that the goals remain the same. We have the same goals basically for our CGI, in Spanish it’s CGI, because it’s Comunión de Gracia Internacional. So, our objectives are basically the same, but they have a slight change. In 2023, for example, our objectives were to prepare and make a space for young people who will participate in the proclamation of the gospel.

And now in this year, 2024, we have to train and to open spaces for those members and those young people who will participate in the proclamation of the gospel. So, I think that we’re going to continue developing this objective, for example, in the pastoral Avenue to give more spaces to those young people, young adults and also other people, and implementing the MTC people that are very committed in these courses, and we’re going to give them more opportunities.

That is something definitely that is staying the same because it’s a plan that we are going to implement in five years from now. We want to create good leaders in the Hope Avenue. We are going to continue to create an environment that leads people to worship the Lord in the community.

And we change it a little bit. Maybe we’re going to change it next year. Not only to worship the Lord in the community, but also to prepare to receive His word and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us. It’s just like we add additional parts that we think are important and complete or complement or just add additional value to what has been created before.

For example, the Faith Avenue is the same. We had our mission, our objectives in 2023 were to train and instruct and guide new disciples who in turn will train other disciples, right? Yes.

And so, we add that they have to know Jesus in this way. They’re going to know Jesus so that their lives are going to be transformed. And all of this is part of the vision in 2024. And I think that in 2025, the vision is going to be reflecting that love and that transformation and all of that training into the neighborhood, into their jobs, into their lives.

So, every Avenue is basically the same, but with small changes, adding new changes to the objectives.

[00:17:46] Hector: Yeah. I will say also that we have to work on the maturity of the leaders who are in front of the Avenues for them to be more into their gift or their ministry.

We want to be working with them for the maturity of the whole congregation, but to create a better environment of stability in the sense that we want to see maturity in our leaders, more maturity, I would say. I don’t know how to explain it very well. But I want to see people mature, stable and that they know what they are doing and to have a group of people, friends and family and coworkers, that respect each other, motivate each other, admire each other. So, to create a very nice environment, a church that reflects Jesus Christ in every aspect of the things we do as a congregation.

[00:19:04] Cara: When you’re looking at these goals, it’s not that the goals change in a completely different direction every year.

So, you’re continuing in that same direction of purpose and objective of that Avenue within the vision of your congregation but continuing to maybe push a little bit deeper into that purpose. And that goes along even after, as you said, growing maturity in that purpose as leaders and also in your expressions in the ministry Avenue.

So, I think that really speaks to what you’re saying, Pastor, about that stability and maybe even sustainability. It’s not that it’s something brand new every year that you have a new different goal that’s completely separate from what the year is. Before schools were, but that you’re continuing to press deeper and maturity into these ministries of the faith, hope and love avenues together as a congregation.

I think that’s a really wise picture of how our goals can continue to build upon each other year to year. So, I’m wondering, just as we wrap up today. What are maybe one or two of the key questions you and your teams are exploring as you put together or prepare to put together your ministry action plans for 2025?

[00:20:40] Juanca: Sure. So, we have more than two questions, but they’re all related. Maybe we make a summary of all these questions into one. Sure. And we’re not looking to change but consolidate. We want to consolidate the leaders. We want to motivate the leaders in the mission and vision.

So, the questions may be: how to create a voluntary commitment, right? How to create a high love for the church? How to consolidate the team into a better team? How to awaken that desire of people to participate? These are great questions because there are some people that just like the idea or love to participate, and what is their motivation, right?

How to inspire and motivate love for the scriptures in a time that I think not a lot of people are reading the Bible, or they think it’s a really old book, for example. How to create a joyful and engaging motivation, driven attitude in young adults or in the youth ministry?

And so basically with all of these questions, we need to consolidate our teams to remind others to commit to Christ. And these are the questions that we want to explore for the next year.

[00:22:17] Hector: Yeah. I was thinking that I wanted to give you thanks for these questions, because it definitely helped us to rethink what we are doing.

And that’s a very good exercise to go through these questions and to evaluate and to see and evaluate what we have done in the past and what we are planning to do in the future. So, this interview is very beneficial for that.

I will say that for next year, I pray continually, basically giving thanks to God that our congregation is alive. That’s a great thing because with the pandemic at times, I have friends, pastors that lost their congregation because they, for example, they were paying rent. And economical situation was so bad that they had to close their congregation because of economical reasons. Just the fact that we exist, that we have attendance, it is a blessing.

It is a great blessing. That’s something that motivates me. And I pray and I give thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ for having a congregation alive with this vision that He Himself has given us to have people like Juan Carlos, my wife, and other leaders. That’s great. I give thanks for all of them. I give thanks for our denomination.

That’s great. The support we receive, the guide, the help in so many ways, the Equipper, all the things that we receive from [inaudible], that’s great. I appreciate a lot all this package, I would say.

[00:24:15] Cara: No, we appreciate what you all are doing and how you’re really participating in the ways God’s leading you and challenging you and blessing you in Bogotá.

I love to hear and to see what’s happening each and every time that we connect. It’s always a pleasure to hear from both of you. So, I want to thank you once again for joining us for this series. You spent a lot of time with us on GC Podcasts this year. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all of that time and investment from the first quarter of the year and until now. I know that it’s going to be a blessing to our listeners as we all move towards using our Ministry Action Plans as a focusing and liberating tool for our local ministries and leaders. And your insights have been really helpful and encouraging. So, thank you.

Thank you, Pastor Hector and Juanca for joining us today. I would love, Pastor Hector, would you say a prayer for our listeners, our ministry leaders and pastors and denomination as we close out today?

[00:25:30] Hector: Yes, of course.

I want to pray to our God, to our Lord Jesus Christ, give thanks to Him because of His church, because of the plan He has for all of us in His kingdom, because He has a vision for all of us, and He has already blessed us with all blessing, which is so great to see that He loves us so much, and that He created us to become as much as He is and to share with Him with our Father and with the Holy Spirit all this kingdom eternal. So that plan is fantastic! It gives us direction and reason to live and reason for doing church. And I bless in the name of Jesus, all the pastors, all those who are working, preaching, and giving others the hope of the salvation and the marvelous future we have in Jesus Christ.

All blessing, every blessing be with the pastors and leaders and congregations of our denomination and beyond us. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

[00:27:00] Cara: Amen. Thank you both so much once again, and until next time y’all, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Assessing the Impact of Your MAP w/ Hector and Juan Carlos Barrero

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. Hello friends, and welcome to this episode of GC podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in the context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity. And today we welcome back Pastor Hector and Juanca to discuss our series on processes and practices of discernment, strategic planning, and Ministry Action Plans.

Thank you so much, Hector and Juanca, for joining us again today.

Juanca: Hello, Cara. How are you?

Hector: Hello, Kara.

Cara: Doing very well. Thank you both so much for coming back. I’m really looking forward to learning more from you about this Ministry Action Plan process and what it has looked like for you all.

I know that we’re coming to the end of the year as we record this episode. And one of the things that can be helpful to us when we think about Ministry Action Plans is to reflect on our action plans for the year and maybe debrief or look at what was actually accomplished, what our goal progress looked like.

I want to know from you guys, how has your team reflected on the impact of your Ministry Action Plan this year [and] the progress that you’ve made towards your ministry vision and goals?

[00:01:44] Juanca: Sure. We have noticed that the people basically participate more and people that are involved are aware of all the events. They are helping in the activities, and this brings growth. This brings place-sharing and fosters relationships along the way in every ministry.

It also develops leadership because some people are pioneers, and some people are just very creative. Once a team is empowered and they have this fire for doing the work, the ideas flow. And there’s a healthy independence when they are planning and sharing their ideas — that are later supporting new activities. And suddenly we have a lot of new activities.

I can speak, for example, on behalf of the ministry planners in the Love Avenue. And they just came up with an activity, for example, a few months ago to support the missions outside the church and to focus on the community, focusing especially for people that love animals. They love dogs, they have cats, a lot of people have — I cannot think of someone that doesn’t have a dog, at least a hamster.

So, they came up with this rare, very creative idea of providing a gift with a card in representation of the church saying, this is Grace Communion International, we just want to give you a gift and have a good day, something like that. And this event is going to take place in a month or so. But they were the ones that created all of this movement. They talked with the mayorship of the neighborhood, and they did everything.

It’s independence, a good, healthy independence. They are empowered. They’re full of ideas. And there’s just very good possibilities of growing in relationships, again, of growing ministry in place-sharing. And this brings a very good growth in our church and to the body of Christ.

[00:04:22] Hector: Yeah. I would say I would call that the liberating power of having a MAP. Liberating power is that we notice that when people are into something, and we showed them what we want to do in the community, people start giving us ideas. And they themselves are very creative in creating things and ways to reach the community. For example, I see that these MAPs are very liberating in terms of the things that are accomplished, are done, and the gifts of people are in action.

So those things, we see when we are planning. It is just the beginning of things.

[00:05:21] Cara: Hearing you both speak about the impact that the Ministry Action Plans have had, just brought such a joy to me because it’s like you said, Hector, that liberating aspect, and Juanca, the increase in growth of people participating — I just have in mind this equipping the saints for ministry, of fostering the priesthood of all believers. And that’s a really beautiful thing.

And I really appreciate you all sharing that. I would encourage our listeners to really reflect on what you’ve shared and see that when used in this sort of liberatory kind of way, Ministry Action Plans equip and empower folks and not just become something that you feel like tied to or becomes restricting.

I’m just overjoyed hearing about how it’s been a tool for you all to help increase and empower people participating in Jesus’s ministry there. I love that. That’s what the church is called to do. I praise God for that.

And I wonder too, as you’re noticing and reflecting on these impacts and the growth that’s happening, when you have specific goals that you’ve articulated together as a church team, how do you (or do you not) measure your progress towards those goals maybe? What are the things that you do and do not look at?

[00:07:00] Juanca: Okay. Yeah, definitely we have measured progress, and the feedback basically is collected grom the team members in a post event meeting. This is very simple. We just meet, and there’s an evaluation.

We talk about the necessary adjustments; challenges and difficulties are presented to improve for the next time. To consider a better location, to consider money, the budget, to consider some variables that we were not contemplating. We talk about the accomplishments, the pros of the events, and the goals, and the situations, everything that took place.

And also, the cons — what went bad or what we need to restructure in case the goal was not reached. There was a time also in the Love Avenue that we were expecting a lot of people, and the attendance was very low. And we evaluated the event; we just talked about what went wrong.

All of this measures the progress towards more strategic goals, right? And that’s basically it. We just gather, we talk about it. And then everything goes on What’s App in the conversation that we have on What’s App. And we send the information for everybody to get informed because not all the time people can attend these meetings, and flexibility is super important.

[00:08:52] Hector:  And I would also say in another Avenue, in the Faith Avenue, how it is not something that we do in the community as in the Love Avenue. I have seen people getting involved in teaching. They tell us, I would like to teach. And we have the opportunity with these people who are willing to work in small groups, to train them and give material, church material, our beliefs. And we explain to them how to explain those beliefs to others.

In each area, I see people working according to what God himself called people to do. We see people very motivated in their work around the congregation, around the church in the community. But I see others who are teachers, who are really involved into, “I want to teach the doctrines.” It is good to see how people are different and that they have different strengths. It’s nice to see how the Avenues reach people according to their gifts.

[00:10:20] Cara: Yes, I think that’s maybe an often overlooked (maybe that’s the right word that I’m looking for) for a measure of progress: whether the members and leaders in our congregation are serving and leading according to their gifts and callings. And I love hearing that in each Avenue, you’re seeing more people being able to plug in in a way that matches their gifts and calling.

And with what you said, Juanca, too, being able to be reflective and debriefing and measuring the progress of different events or the approaches that you’re taking in ministries. I think it’s really helpful, like you said, to create even more strategic goals moving forward in the future.

I appreciate those insights. And as you do that, I heard what both of you were saying, that when you measure these progresses and look at this information, you don’t just look at it just for fun, right? And say, okay, now I have this information. That’s fine. We’ll just file it away. But you use it to inform more strategic goals, or where we go next, or if you need to train and put more leaders to do a particular ministry.

I’m wondering, can you share with us something that you’ve learned this year that you’re going to use to inform your next year’s Ministry Action Plan?

[00:12:05] Juanca: Yeah, we are going to evaluate each event. Most of the time we gather in October, November. And we are going to analyze each of the events that took place this year.

Analyzing everything  — the Hope Avenue, worship team, the people that were given the opportunity to preach, the adjustments or things that we can improve as a team. And definitely, while we evaluate each event, we are going to learn from our mistakes, maybe

We’re going to take this year’s activities into account for next year’s development and plans, and we’re just going to make the process better. We can improve, right? We can improve, and it’s all part of the process in how we’re making an impact in the community.

I guess that all of the ministries are going to present their achievements. Right now, we’re not up to that point yet. We have got to have that meeting. And when we do, we’re certainly going to take the things that worked, and analyze those things that didn’t, to create more events, to enhance a little bit the three Avenues, the flow, the people.

Every single year, there’s more people participating in the Avenues. And we feel that has been very positive.

[00:13:50] Hector: Yeah. And I also would say that we want everybody to know that this plan is not for one year, two years, three years. No. It’s going to be stable. It’s going to be something that we will be working for many years. And these three Avenues, for them to be sure that this is something stable, serious.

That we will continue doing better things. This will bring some type of maturity to members and to Avenues. The stability of the idea that it’s not temporary, but it is something that we will be working through time.

[00:14:38] Juanca: Yeah. And for example, I want to give the example of some young people and some leaders that were given the opportunity to speak in public. This was the year of doing that. And I will definitely repeat that in next year to give more opportunities to those young adults that are involved in church and they’re leaders in the youth ministry, they’re leaders in the discipleship. And some of them have the gift of preaching, and they’re very creative.

So that’s one of the things that we have definitely to repeat, to develop so that we have new ideas, new leaders, another perspective. And we know that this is something that we have to implement in each ministry and each Avenue.

[00:15:42] Cara: Yes. And when you mentioned that each Avenue initially, you’re present this review of the year. Does each Avenue ministry see the review from each other’s Avenue as well? Do the leaders of each Avenue get to see the reviews from the other Avenues at the end of the year?

[00:16:06] Juanca: Oh, yes, definitely. In that meeting that we’re having, we’re talking about everything. They read all of their achievements, they read all of this. This was implemented. And so, we have a special growing phase, I will say at the end of the year.

I want to mention especially that we were visited this year by a very wonderful lady. Her name is Liliana Aparicio, and she was teaching us, guiding us into coaching. And this changed a lot of perspective in the way that we guide our teams.

It’s not about you being involved 100%. You don’t have to know all the information. You don’t have to suggest anything. Just ask questions, the right questions. That’s basically the theory that we learned.

It was a very liberating exercise that we took with the congregation of Barranquilla. And that was a very positive exercise because sometimes we just have the wrong perspective, maybe the wrong diagnosis of something. To let each leader discover the solution by asking the right questions is so important. It’s crucial for the process that we want to do in our church, especially to be independent, at the same time to make decisions based on the Spirit and based on the Bible.

And with this, let’s say coaching session, that was very positive. Cara, that was so positive for us.

[00:17:58] Hector: Yeah. Also, we have meetings, monthly meetings, in which all the champions of the Avenues and some members of the Avenues get together. We hear from the others what they are doing. We get together and we get informed what is going on in the other Avenue.

So, everybody is aware of what is going on in the other ministries, to be together in unity, according to the same and only vision for the congregation.

[00:18:41] Cara: Yes, thank you for sharing that. I wondered and I asked that follow up question because I think that gives also, sounds like, a great opportunity for the leaders from each Avenue to learn from each other when they’re report back to what’s working and what’s not working and what’s happening in each Avenue. I really love hearing about the level of communication and teamwork that you all have happening with your ministry teams locally and one Avenue can even learn from another in that way.

Again, I’m also very glad that the coaching was a positive aspect for you guys. I think that can be an approach that is really helpful in developing the Ministry Action Plan. I’m happy to hear that you felt that way.

[00:19:39] Juanca: That was awesome.

[00:19:40] Cara: Excellent. Folks, that’s all we have for this episode, but join us for one more mini episode with Hector and Juanca as we finish up this mini-series on practices and processes of discernment, strategic planning, and Ministry Action Plans.

Let me pray for y’all.

Lord God, we thank you so much that you are alive and active in our midst. Thank you that you created us for relationship because you are relationship, and that we get to learn in community with one another. I pray that you would bless us as we move forward, just reflecting and discerning together what we’ve learned this year as we’ve participated in your ministry. And as we use those reflections to inform our discernment of what that looks like, what you may be calling us into in this coming year. Inspire us, Holy Spirit, in a way that only you can. We thank you and praise you in your wonderful and holy name that you are so faithful to us. In your wonderful name, we pray. Amen.

Cara: All right, folks, until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today we return to our series on process and practices of discernment, strategic planning, and ministry action plans (MAP).

And to do this, let’s welcome back Pastor Hector and Juanca, who helped us kick off the series at the beginning of the year. Thank you for joining us today, Hector and Juanca. We’re very appreciative for your insight that you’ll be sharing with us today.

Hector: Thank you, too, Cara.

Juanca: Hello. Hello. Thank you, Cara. How are you?

Cara: I’m doing well. How are the both of you doing?

Juanca: We’re doing great. Thanks for asking.

Cara: Good. I’m so glad to hear that. And I know we’re coming up towards the end of the year. And like I said, we’re returning to this series on the discernment, strategic planning, and ministry action plans.

So, we want to hear a little bit about how what you shared with us during the first quarter — what it’s looked and how it’s gone for you all. I do want to ask you guys; what difference did using a MAP make for your local church ministries this year?

[00:01:23] Juanca: Yes. So that will be a lot. First of all, we now have a clearer idea of the direction that our church is heading in. We have clearly defined a goal and a vision and a mission in contrast to the years when we didn’t use a MAP, right?

So, we had goals, but not specifically target or targeted towards the Avenues and the ministries. So, this strategy allows us to concentrate on each of the different challenges, events, and necessities that arise. And because of this, we just have a better awareness of all the ministries and the church as a whole.

In the past, we used to just plan, for example, for the Hope Avenue. With the Avenues, you now have more opportunities available for people to serve in different ministries and this developed relationships, more events — everything focused exclusively on making a positive impact on the community, and sharing hope, sharing love, and sharing the faith of Christ.

[00:02:45] Hector: Yes. I would say that we are more focused on things that are clearly a part of our church, giving us the good results. So we have a clear idea on what to do, where to work, and how to bring people to those Avenues.

So, it has been good to have our MAP in this direction.

[00:03:12] Cara: Yeah, that’s so great to hear. And I love how you all say it brought focus and clarity. Because you have had goals in the past, but what the MAP has done is help you to bring that specific focus and clarity and holistic approach to the ministries.

And now, I know one of the things that we can be sometimes worried about or maybe be concerned about when putting together a ministry action plan for a whole year is: we don’t always know what’s going to happen during the year. Right? And maybe things will have to change.

I wonder how did you all discern when and how adjustments maybe needed to be made to your MAP this year?

[00:03:54] Juanca: Okay. There’re always adjustments because of the context, because of a person that was not available, or things change all the time. But in this document that we call the IMAP, in the MAP, we just based on a new document that we created, we generated a very similar document, but it is basically a chronogram that we shared online.

So, we are always detailing all the year’s activities with the date and the person in charge. If some adjustments have to be made this is immediately shared with the leaders. So, in this way, everyone knows what’s happening each month, and it’s easy to change, to share ideas in a fast-paced way, creating an efficient information flow for everyone.

We use, for example, WhatsApp as a platform. That has been crucial for our connectivity due to its promptness in sending messages and ideas towards the goals and agreements, the meetings of every Avenue and the ministries. We have many groups on WhatsApp, each one representing a ministry.

And most of the weeks, weekly there are meetings in each ministry. There’s planning; they gather to pray, to talk about their ministries and their plans and everything. And most of the time they send a summary or like the meeting’s minutes so that everyone knows the agreements or the decisions or the plans. Yeah, everything is adjusted to the context, to the needs, to whatever happens in the year.

And basically, we took the MAP and IMAP documents and put them on a chronogram. We also use Zoom, but WhatsApp here in Columbia, it’s very used in our culture. A lot of people have WhatsApp. And if you are working in X or Y company, whatever company, they have a group on WhatsApp, and they communicate a lot of instructions there.

And so, we are taking advantage of WhatsApp right now. We don’t use a lot of emails. Maybe the emails are used for sending the Equipper or maybe a private matter, a little bit more formal maybe. But it’s always part of adjusting because of the context and all the challenges that arise in the year.

[00:06:47] Hector: Yeah, I would say that WhatsApp is a very easy thing to use. Everybody has a phone, a cell phone, so everybody is able to be very close to the information we send, and it has been a very effective way to communicate what we want. So, Paulina, my wife, and Juan Carlos, who is basically the person who is in charge of all the Avenues, they have an easy way to communicate.

I would say that is something that we are benefiting from the pandemic times, this new way to communicate things. We don’t have to be together all the time in a personal meeting, but through WhatsApp, we are in contact all the time. Everybody can read things, so we are always on the same page concerning messages and ideas and planning.

[00:07:51] Cara: Yes, and what I’m hearing that I think is important for us to keep in mind is that when adjustments are made throughout the year to the ministry action plans and details to even timelines or deadlines, or maybe who will be responsible for something, communication is a really key piece that. That you all have put in place and found the ways that best work for your team to communicate to one another, which in your cases is the WhatsApp, to make sure that you are on the same page. All of the information is available to all the team members on a continuous basis, right? That if any change is made, immediately, the whole team has access to that, and you can quickly communicate one to another so that adjustments can be made in a smooth manner amongst the team with everyone still in the loop.

I think it’s really helpful to think about, that the communication is really important when we have to make adjustments to our ministry action plans throughout the year. That helps us continue to work in that team-based way.

[00:09:05] Juanca: Yeah, two years ago, we started implementing MAP, and we did have an annual plan, but with the MAP, we were able to focus more as we said before in each Avenue.

And so, all the events and the overall planning seem to be more organized using this structure, right? Efficiency. And the vision, for example, was a big change for us. And this was the result of some meetings in which we generated — in a great practice, a conversation that we had — a vision, a new vision.

And so, this new vision is now part of our liturgy or Sunday service. So, after we read a psalm verse from the Bible, every single Sunday, we always read our vision as a church. The whole church reads the vision with the person in charge, for example, of the announcements.

And the vision goes like this:

We are a church that honors God, proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ, serves the community and grows in faith, hope, and love.

So, we always mention this vision every single Sunday. And if a newcomer, or a person that is visiting us, is present, the person is going to know that we have this vision that involves the three Avenues and that we are focused in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Avenues.

And so, we needed these changes to focus more on developing each Avenue and having a clearer vision and mission for every year.

[00:10:52] Hector: Yeah. Also sometimes, not every Sunday, but sometimes I explain a little bit of each Avenue, how it works. And we invite people to integrate into one of those Avenues, so people know that we are working in certain areas. I explain what is the Love Avenue or the Faith Avenue. So, people get acquainted with things that we are doing and the things that we are working on.

[00:11:27] Cara: Yeah, I really like what you all are saying, that this becomes interwoven in the rhythms of the life of the local church because that’s one of the things that I was going to ask about next.

Sometimes with ministry action plans, we’ll put them together for the year and make these goals, put together a vision and a mission and even put together a timeline and a calendar. But then we never referenced back to it. We don’t use it to inform our routine ministry activities. And what you all are describing that you all have that vision that you all have put together and that kind of as an organizing piece of your local ministries of the church.

So, I would just love if you had more to add about how often did you all as a team refer back to your ministry action plan? And what ways did you make sure that it helped to shape the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month routine ministry activities of your local congregation?

[00:12:43] Juanca: There’s something important that we have to mention, and that is with the MAP, we were able to create a theme for every year. We started two years ago. For example, in 2023 our theme was “Rebuilding the Church.” But this rebuilding the church implies that — this title implies that we needed to organize the church with the new parameters which are the Avenues.

We needed to organize everything focused on the Avenues and in delegating people and ministries and leaders preparing leaders for each Avenue. And at the beginning, it was a little bit of a challenge.

But now this year in 2024, our theme is “Building Together” because we feel that we were able to rebuild quote “the church,” in terms of reorganizing the church in such a way that we contemplated the three Avenues, the pastoral, the faith, love, and hope.

So, in 2024, we are building together from what we did in the year 2023. Yeah, we’re definitely always in a constant change towards, in this case, the great commission in Matthew 28. This is applied in all the Avenues, following these goals, the vision, and the mission that have been created in an agreement with all the brothers and sisters leaders that are attending these meetings in which we discuss everything regarding the Avenues.

[00:14:39] Hector: One thing that motivates me a lot is to see more and more people involved. That’s good because at the beginning it was difficult to invite people to this new way of thinking. But as time went on, more and more people understood what we meant by the three Avenues and more people now are getting integrated into the ministries, different ministries.

So now we have a lot of people working in these Avenues, and I see a lot of people involved, which is very good. It is excellent because to see a lot of people working it gives you a sense of, I’m not alone, a lot of people are working, which is excellent.

Sometimes myself as a pastor, I have to confess, I see the results of people working, and I didn’t know exactly that they were working in things, developing plans, doing things. And I say, this is great. This is great that people are getting the vision, doing things by themselves. But finally, we get all of us together and reach things all of us together.

[00:16:04] Juanca: Yes. In addition to that I will add that it is also, from a different perspective, a challenge to stay, to be stable sometimes because of the liquid society, the liquid modernity that we live in. Everything is changing, people come and go.

It brings to my mind two authors, Gilles Lipovetsky and Zygmunt Bauman. They talk about the liquid society, and it is so real right now. Everything changes. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. The structures are not that strong. And this is happening on all levels in society and also in the church.

So, we feel that sometimes people are tired because of their jobs. And it brings to my mind a family, for example, that has a graveyard shift. And they’re always tired, and sometimes they’re just absent because they’re so tired. And we have to work, and we have to provide, and there’s a pressure from all of these things. But in spite of that, in spite of all of those challenges, we feel that if we continue down this path, in this path of the three Avenues, and we make them clear for people, so we’re building together, as our theme says.

[00:17:34] Cara: I think that is brilliant using a theme as a kind of practical way to keep at the forefront your goals and the ways that you’re wanting to express your mission and your mission specifically that year because things are memorable, right?

It’s harder maybe day to day to be like, oh, yeah, we set this one goal, and we were going to use this metric to measure it. And on this day, we’re going to do this. But a theme is something that we can connect to. And so, I think that’s great.

And as you guys are saying too, that invitation for people to come in and participate in that ministry of the three Avenues — I think that’s just a wonderful picture of the local ministries of the church, just coming to life in these healthy rhythms, in a way that the ministry action plan is just a helpful tool versus something that helps to serve the life of the church, right? Rather than, it’s not just us just doing something just to check off a box or serving the ministry action plan rather than it serving us.

I think that you guys have shared a really beautiful picture of what it can look like. So, I thank you very much for sharing what that has looked like for you this year.

Are there any other thoughts that you want to share before we close out our time today and then invite you back in for our next mini episode?

[00:19:22] Hector: I would like to mention something. But probably I don’t know how to put it together with the subjects we are discussing right now. But it is our effort to educate our people. We are in the CEM, in Spanish, Centro de Educación Ministerial. And we are preparing new leaders. And this is another activity that is motivating a lot our members, our congregation. They know that we are involved in something that is preparing leaders and pastors for the future, for having in mind new congregations in the future.

This also has motivated those that are already working in the Avenues, and it is motivating also the congregation as a whole. It is so good to have these different, I would say, efforts to bring growth to the congregation; it’s good because I perceive myself, the church, very alive, very enthusiastic with a clear vision with the desire to grow.

And we have Jews involved in these classes, Saturdays in the mornings, and the MTC that we have over here in Bogota. So, I would say I wanted to add that to [inaudible] the Avenues. All of that together is bringing health to the congregation.

[00:21:15] Cara: Yes, thank you, Pastor Hector for adding that because while not every congregation will have an MTC that they’re developing and running in their local congregation, what I think is really important about what you’ve shared and that every congregation can connect to, is this idea of pouring into the next generation, the future generations of leaders, recognizing that the church is alive with a clear vision, as you say.

And for that to motivate the people that are gathering together as the church to participate in Jesus’s ministry. I think that’s a wonderful thing. And as you said, for you guys in Bogota specifically, the MTC is one of the things that helps to bring that motivation to the members because they see specifically and with clarity what you all are doing, what you’re working on, how you are preparing these leaders for the next generation, maybe church planting in the future, things like that.

And I think, again, that comes to the importance of how you all have named clarity and focus and organization and communication as being important pieces of how your team functions, because when a plan or goals or something that you are working on is clear, then that can be motivational, right?

We don’t have that clarity, sometimes it’s not so compelling, right? And so, I really appreciate you sharing that, Pastor Hector. And for our listeners, just because you might not have an MTC, don’t miss out on what Pastor Hector just said, because the future of the church and generations-to-come is something that is applicable in your context.

So, thank you so much. Well, I was just going to close us out for this episode, say a brief prayer for you both, and thank you for your time with us.

[00:23:38] Juanca: Thank you, Cara.

[00:23:39] Cara: No, thank you. I appreciate everything you shared. It’s so insightful. And again, I think it paints us a really compelling picture of what the life of the local church can look like.

So, I’d love to pray for you both and our leaders.

God, I come before you so thankful for Pastor Hector and Juanca. And I thank you for their team of leaders, for Paulina, who also works very closely with them in key leadership, their Avenue champions. I thank you for the ways that they have brought focus and clarity to their local church ministries.

I pray that you would continue to bring them wisdom and discernment as they work together as a team. I pray that you would continue to bring them that excitement, that motivation, that more and more would come to want to participate in your ministries. I pray that your Spirit would invigorate them around this vision that they have articulated.

I thank you so much for what they’ve had to share. And Holy Spirit, I ask you that you would do the same for all of us in our local context what is happening in Bogota — to bring us clarity of vision, willingness and excitement to participate in your ministry. We thank you and we praise you in your holy and precious name. Amen.

[00:25:04] Hector: Amen. Amen.

[00:25:06] Cara: All right. Thank you, guys, again for taking the time to join us today. Listeners, don’t forget to check back next month for the next mini-episode of this series. And until then, take care. Keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Practicing Presence w/ Afrika Mills

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, we welcome Afrika Afeni Mills, who will be leading us through an exercise. It will help us practice and become more aware of the presence of God with us.

We invite you to co-create your own experiences of spiritual formation through personal and communal practices. We believe that through such personal and communal practices, we open ourselves and surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst grow us up into the healthiest participants in the ministry of Christ that we can be, to the glory of the Father.

Afrika: Hello, I am Afrika Afeni Mills, and I serve as the Faith Avenue Champion at GC Steele Creek in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am so excited to talk with you about practicing being in the presence of God, and particularly, talking about a welcoming soul healing in God’s presence.

I have had the gift and opportunity to be a part of the School of Formation and Transforming Centers, Transforming Community. In those spaces, I have been learning a lot about what it means to relate to God in a secure way and, in a way, being reparented by God, as well.

All of us were raised by the folks who are our caregivers, and our caregivers do the best that they can. At the same time, all of us as human beings have fractures, and we have brokenness that sometimes causes a bit of challenge for us as we grow in our relationships with God. We can sometimes take some of those experiences and the brokenness that comes from some of those experiences and bring that into our relationship with God. We sometimes feel like he may be distant, not listening, or he is disconnected from what we are experiencing.

I want to talk about what we learn about God in the scriptures, what the scriptures tell us, particularly Psalm 23 says,

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I love that passage. It is my favorite passage in all of Scripture because it reveals how present God is with us. All the references in that passage talk about God’s active engagement with us, God’s presence with us, God being with us, comforting us, and anointing us with abundant love and goodness.

When we think about being in the presence of God, it’s what I love to have anchoring my time with him. Also in Matthew 11: 28-30, Jesus says,

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

That passage, also, is so encouraging because it is Jesus inviting us to be with him, just as he is Immanuel with us. That invitation shows how much he cares for us and that he notices where we are all burdened, where we have challenges, and when we are exhausted and need rest.

When I think about exhaustion, I think about that in our physical bodies, but also in our spirits. This invitation for Jesus to walk alongside us and to help us is such a warm and loving invitation, especially when he talks about being gentle and humble. We know that these things are true in Scripture, and we know intellectually, and even in our spirit, that we can be in God’s presence and that all these things are available to us.

Yet, we struggle because we are human beings who have had different experiences in our relationships with the people in our lives that make it hard for us to live into the reality of God’s presence. One of the things I wanted to talk about and share with you today is the practice of transforming or inner healing prayer.

I had the experience of participating in Odyssey in Christ’s “Experiencing the Trinity” retreat last in the fall of 2023. It was the first time I had heard about this spiritual practice. I had heard about several other ways of engaging with God, but this one resonated with me because it talked about and acknowledged that we do need such help from God when we want to go through transformation with him.

There are things in us that need to be healed. From the guide that we received as participants, it says, and I quote from the guide,

“Our growing love relationship with the Lord involves an invitation to participate with him in his ongoing ministry. One vital component of Jesus’ ministry has always been that of healing. He has come to heal the brokenhearted, to release and set free those who are in darkness, and to provide for those who grieve, blessing them with the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment in praise instead of a spirit of despair. [And that comes from Isaiah 63: 1-3.] The healing ministry of Christ involves the provision of restoration to wholeness at all levels of human concern. As with other aspects of his ministry, Jesus invites us to participate with him.” [p 35]

And then the guide goes on to quote from Richard Foster’s writing, Prayer, Finding the Heart’s True Home, and Richard Foster says,

“Healing prayer… is a clear recognition of the incarnational nature of our faith. God cares as much about the body as he does the soul, as much about the emotions as he does the spirit. The redemption that is in Jesus is total, involving every aspect of the person — body, soul, will, mind, emotions, spirit.”

Let us think about this exercise, this spiritual practice. I will go through the way I want to do the steps of the practice, and then I will talk through a bit of what my experience has been with that practice.

I am going to invite you to lean into your time with God, and to spend some time reflecting on each of the steps. I will pause between the steps so that you may do that in your own time with God.

We begin with an invocation, where we invoke the presence of God. That is really, on a basic level, asking God to be with you, even though we know he is always with us. We are inviting his active presence with us in this time that we are spending with him intentionally. So, I would like for you to pause for about a minute, and just spend some time inviting God to be with you.

[Pause.]

The next step in the exercise is that you would like to do — ideally, if you have someone who is like a spiritual director or companion or friend for you, would be able to invoke this blessing over you. But, if you are engaging in this by yourself, you can begin by asking the Holy Spirit to be with you and then wait in silence as you open your heart to the Lord.

I would like for you to do that now. I invite you to take about a minute to just sit in God’s presence and ask for God’s blessing over you during this time.

[Pause.]

The next step that you are going to engage with is conversation and preparation. So, you have already now invoked God’s presence. You have now either had a blessing asked over you, or you have asked for a blessing on yourself and have listened to what the Holy Spirit would say to you. In this third step for a conversation and preparation, you are beginning also with some time of silence, which I will invite you into again. This time is to sense God’s presence where you are moving into letting God know what it is that you are hoping for in prayer with him.

And if you’re not sensing God’s presence in the way that you might think — because sometimes, we expect that these times we spend with God to happen in a certain way and sometimes we are not sure if what it is that we are whether we have heard from God or not. But just be able to lean into the process and to prepare to encounter God.

You are acknowledging that you are anticipating God, experiencing tangibly God’s love and care for you, and you want to lean into the invitation to center your thoughts on Jesus. I invite you to spend some additional time in silence. We will take about another minute to just sit before God and to really be sensing God’s presence. And you can be praying verbally or silently to God. You are just going to continue to sit in his presence.

[Pause.]

Step four in the process is listening in prayer. This is my favorite part. Then, I will tell you a bit about what I experienced when I engaged in this practice. This is a time where you, either with your spiritual director or companion or on your own, where you go to a safe place in your mind, where you would enjoy meeting with God.

This can be a literal place or an imagined space with God. Do not worry if no place comes to mind, which is okay. Try to imagine a place where you would encounter God, acknowledge that God is your Lord, remember that God loves you dearly, and that he says in his word that he will never leave you.

You want to try to imagine a place like that. We want to spend some time, take about two minutes to spend time with God and imagining what this place would be for you. In that time, you are going to be inquiring of God what he would want you to know or to do.

Also, you are going to be waiting and responding to him as you begin to encounter God in this place that is in your mind. When we get toward the end of that two minutes, we are going to be definitely be engaging in thanksgiving and appreciation for God’s love and care for us and for you.

Let us take that time during these two minutes now to imagine that safe place in your mind.

[Pause.]

After you have had an opportunity to listen in prayer and to find that real or imagined place with God, the next step is to savor the moment. Having encountered God in that space — if that space came to mind for you — you would be affirming God’s love, care, and concern for you. I am thinking about, too, whatever you engage with, with God because as I talked about in the beginning, we bring a lot of our own scripts from our own families, part of our own brokenness or the fractures that we have experienced into our time with God.

So even in the place that you imagine with God, it may have been an experience that was abundant and bountiful for you. It may be a place where you needed to spend some time just having God receive your brokenness and your tears and your sadness, your disappointment or regret. Just know that this time, the listening, and the prayer, it can be whatever it needs to be between you and God.

You are savoring what happened between you and God during that time and being mindful of what happened for you with God during that time. Once we have that time to engage with God, we want to take some time to savor the moment. You are going to pause for about a minute or two and just allow God to have you savor the time that you spent together with him.

[Pause.]

The next step in the process is that you are going to be sealing the work. In the sealing the work part of the practice, you or the person who is serving as your spiritual director, companion, friend are asking for God to allow what he has done in this time of prayer to be sealed in your life, take root in you, and to produce spiritual fruit in your life.

As you are thinking about that, a lot of times what comes to mind for me would be the fruit of the Spirit and thinking about those various aspects. Not to say that you must think about all nine, but there are specific ones that jump out at you as you are thinking about the time that you spent together with God.

So, take about a minute to pray or to be prayed over and to seal the work that God has done with you in this time.

[Pause.]

The ultimate step in this exercise or in this practice is to process. If you have a spiritual director or companion or friend with you, then this would be time for you to think about how God has been at work with you during this time of healing prayer.

What is it that God is healing in you?

If you are engaging in this process, just between you and God, then you might want to journal and write down what it is that you experienced. You might want to just talk with God, not just because it is important to engage with God in a way that works best between you and God, but to really use this time to reflect and process and think about what it means for you moving forward.

I want to allow about a minute or two to process what you experienced in your time with God during transformative prayer.

[Pause.]

So, I will talk with you a bit now about what my experience was like in this process. It was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have ever had. I have had the opportunity to publish a book, and I have been a writer for a long time, ever since I was five.

My mom has poetry that I wrote from the time that I was about five years old. You can see me writing in cursive. I am writing poetry, and I started keeping a diary when I was about seven. In that though, as I was growing up, I began to feel like my worth was in my writing. It was in how well I did in school.

I did well in school; I started school a year early. I skipped a grade. And I remember being praised a lot for how I did in school and the grades that I got in school, which at first glance doesn’t really feel like a bad thing. But as I have had time to have God heal me and be in the problem — I am not healed all the way yet; I do not think we are on Earth side — but to engage in healing about what my worth is. What does it mean for me to matter?

In this time of transformative prayer, what I was able to get to, especially in the time of listening in prayer, I was able to get to a space with God. The space that came to mind for me was my living room. We have a big, comfortable couch. It is not the best for your back, but it is cozy.

I imagined being there on my couch, sitting there with Jesus where he was on the chaise lounge part of the couch, and I was on the other part of the couch and my feet were touching Jesus’ feet. He said, during this time when I was engaging in this practice, that we needed to move out of the living room and go someplace else.

I really did not understand that at first. As I trusted Jesus, we were into another space, which was not a real space, but an imagined space. It was this beautiful meadow that was filled with trees, with a body of water, and with all types of plant life and flowers.

It was aromatic and beautiful. My couch was there as well, even though we were not in my living room. What Jesus said to me during this time was that it was important to move out of my living room because in my living room, there is a copy of my book. In a lot of ways, it is where I have gotten my esteem.

During that time when I engaged with Jesus, he told me that I am worth far more than what I produce. If I never wrote a thing, that he adores me, and that he so loves me, and he likes me. That was just such a ministering to my soul because I really needed to hear that.

So much of who I think of being and whether I matter in this world still tends to default to what it is that I do, not who I am as a person. During that time, I experienced God really ushering me into a place of knowing that and beginning to really embrace that my value is because he just loves me and because I am his and because I exist, and he created me.

That really helped me. It really was a balm for me. When I was able to savor in the moment, it was a beautiful experience. It was just what I needed to hear at that moment. It shook loose a lot of negative things that had been cemented in my soul that I really needed to begin to heal with God.

Then, getting to the part of sealing the work and processing, I really was able to start to practice. Yes, I wrote this book or yes, words come to me, and I can create these different experiences in my writing. That is a gift that God has given me, but that is not where my worth is.

The way I respond to him is that I honestly, in my time with God really go back to that meadow a lot of times when I am engaging in silent prayer with God, when I am looking to God for answers. When I think about how it felt to be in that space, I go back to that space and in my body, I can feel lightness and an embrace from God.

As we think about the exercise and after sharing my experience with you, I just want to come into a time of reflection. The scripture that comes to mind for me is in Isaiah 43: 1, where God says this.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”

That is a continuation of that experience with God, just really thinking about God saying that I am his.

It is so lovely to me. So much of my way of relating with God was bringing a lot of that performance-based way of thinking about myself into my relationship with him where I felt like I did not know if I was pleasing to God if I was not doing things for him.

I even had to change the framework of being “used” by God. I do not think in that way anymore. I think about being with God and participating with God and having myself that I belong to God that has really been blessing me. In John 10: 28-29, God says,

28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.

Finally, in Romans 8:38, Paul says,

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In reflecting on that, I belong to God, and nothing can snatch me out of his hand. Nothing can separate me from his love, including my own brokenness or the scripts that I have about my own worth. He is there to heal me from those things. As we close, as we think about who our loving God is, I would like to pray for us.

Holy God, Father, Son, and Spirit, we are so blessed that you are such a present God. You are not someone whose face is still in indifference toward us. You are passionately in love with us. You hold us in your hands. You walk alongside us. You invite us to be with you. You are never apart from us. You are not distant. You are not aloof.

You are concerned. You are so concerned with who we are. Your adoration for us gives us the opportunity to be transformed. We are so grateful to you, God. I pray that even as we conclude, even as we reflect on this transformative prayer, inner healing practice, Lord, we pray that we would come back to this space as often as we need to. It is your desire for us to be whole and for us to know who you are, who we are in you, and what your love for us means for us in this life.

We thank you so much for all you are and for all we get to be with you and with one another because of who you are. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Cara: Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Sharing God’s Story in and Through Your Life

Cara Garrity: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, we welcome Jeff Broadnax, who will be leading us in sharing our testimonies and what God is up to in our everyday lives. We invite you to co-create your own experiences of spiritual formation through personal and communal practices.

We believe that through such personal and communal practices, we open ourselves and surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. May the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst grow us up into the healthiest participants in the ministry of Christ that we can be, to the glory of the Father. Amen.

Jeff: Good morning. I’m Jeff Broadnax, regional director with GCI here in the Eastern region. I’ve served as a pastor for 34 years. And the last few, I’ve been serving as a regional director where I serve pastors. And I help pastors, not only lead their congregations, but help their congregations do the kind of thing that I want to talk about today.

And that is to learn to see and share God’s story through their own life story. I’m honored to be here today and share this with you, and I hope you’ll take the journey with me because this one is a personal one. It’s one that will allow each of us to stop and to reflect and to pay attention to not only what God is doing, but what God has already done.

Because very often when we look at what God has already done in our world and in our lives, it gives us clarity as to what he is doing and frankly what he will do. So, let’s begin with prayer. And then I want to walk you through just a couple of passages of scripture as we move into this clarifying discussion for reflection, for implementation, and for a passionate living sent, of sharing God’s story through our lives.

God, you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we are grateful that we can come and know that you know us, but not just that you know us, but that you specifically made us. You specifically designed the two cells that would come together to make us. That is not just unique, it is powerful.

And what you want from us is that we will see you and that we will see that we don’t have to be anybody else in the world. We just have to be who you’ve created us to be, to come to discover why you made us, why you use us, why you allow us to reflect you very specifically and uniquely in the world.

And so today, as we reflect, it is our desire to be able to see from you what you are doing in our lives. I pray, Lord, that you will bless the words that are spoken to actually be a clear path to a deeper understanding and a deeper discovery or removing of the cover of what you’ve been doing in our lives and what you will continue to do.

And so, we thank you. And in Jesus’ name, do we pray. Amen.

In the book of Acts 1, it was that moment where Jesus was standing before the disciples, and he was about to ascend. And the disciples asked him if it was now the time to restore Israel. And Jesus went on to tell them in Acts 1:7, that’s not what I want you to worry about; I don’t want you to focus on those things. The time and the seasons are not given for you to know.

But he does say in verse 8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And at that point, he was taken up.

And I want to focus on the statement that he made that you will be my witnesses. We know from our 21st century court of law that a witness is somebody who goes and they make an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with the help of God. And if you can, if we can filter that back through what Jesus was saying, cause that’s really what he was saying.

He was saying, you’re going to be a person who will be in Jerusalem and Judea and all of Samaria and the ends of the earth. You’re going to go where you’re safe, where you’re comfortable, where you’re slightly uncomfortable and where sometimes you might be scared to death. And you’re going to tell what you’ve seen, heard and experienced about me.

The Greek word for witness there is martyr. And so, when we think of martyrs, we often think of people who’ve given their lives, in death, for something, but really what that word is meaning in Greek — it may come to that. But what he’s saying is that a witness, or someone who operates in that “martyr,” is somebody who will tell the whole story, tell the whole truth, tell the life story.

And sometimes even telling that hard truth may cost them everything, but they stand on that truth. They stand on that story. And so, what Jesus is saying is he wanted the disciples to be ones who would tell the life story, his story through their lives. Because even with the twelve, none of them had the same story.

Each one of them had a different experience with Jesus, even though they shared some things in common. In Matthew 28, I think this is talking about that same period of time, we call this the Great Commission. But Jesus says, because all authority is his in heaven and earth, he says, I want you to go. And as you go, I want you to make disciples, baptizing people, and teaching them everything I’ve commanded you. And remember, I’m with you to the end of the age.

And I think sometimes for us, it could be easy to teach lessons or principles that Jesus taught. Jesus taught one time about light and salt. We could tell that story, but what if we, instead of just telling the details or the facts of the story, what if we started the story by saying, one time we were with Jesus, and it was this big crowd of people. And when we were sitting there, here’s what we were experiencing while we were going through it. And then he started talking to them about salt and about light, and it was just the coolest thing for me because I remember watching this one woman, in her eyes I saw something special in her eyes and it hit me different.

You see, when you tell the story through that lens if the disciples were to tell the story through the way it happened, the way they experienced it, it might have changed quite a bit about how it’s received.

That’s what Jesus is getting at, I believe, when he says teach them everything. It’s not just about getting a set of doctrines and teaching those doctrines. I believe Jesus is trying to get them to teach about the private conversations he was having with them as they were walking along the way, or when they were sitting in a house, or when they were experiencing somebody who got healed.

Tell the story through the eyes of the story.

When Peter wrote later in 1 Peter 3:15, when he told us to set apart the Lord in our hearts and be ready always to give an answer for the reason that we have hope in you and to do it with meekness and reverence toward God, Peter had so many stories that he could tell. He had so many things, so many moments, and they weren’t just about the facts.

Peter had been able to see his life story come full circle in so many ways. One of the amazing things you should do, we could do, is actually go back and look at Peter’s story and see how many things Jesus does more than once in very specific ways in Peter’s life.

Like the time, [Jesus said] put your net over the side of the boat. How many times did he say that to him? How many different situations? When Peter denied Jesus, there was a smell of coals, and when he came back after the crucifixion, there was a smell of coals. There were so many pieces of Peter’s life that Jesus would bring full circle for him, and Peter could tell the story differently.

That’s the beauty of learning to share God’s story or God’s narrative through your life. Because frankly, if all we do is pass on general information to people, it gets hard for them to be able to see it applying in their world. Giving a testimony, however — sometimes we don’t like that word — but giving a testimony or sharing the story as you’ve seen, heard, and experienced it, allows people to see life through your eyes, and in our case, to see God writing his story through our eyes and through our lives.

I remember reading several years ago, a couple of books. There were three books that really helped me in this space. One was by Henry Blackaby. It’s called, Experiencing God. And it just takes you on a deeper journey of listening for this, the repeatable stories or the things that God has done, where he’s made it very specific.

Max Lucado wrote a book called, The Cure for the Common Life, which is another great book of just walking through helping people, helping one see himself or herself as God has been working very specifically, because no two people are the same.

But the one that really grabbed me and that took me to a deeper place is one by Dr. Dan Allender. It’s a book called, To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future. And he uses the language of story, and he uses the ability to teach us some practices that I think are very helpful in understanding what God has been doing so that we can be clearer on what he is doing and, most likely, will continue to do.

[00:11:11] So, what I’d like to do right now is take you on a journey and have you take a practice with me. I’d like you to just sit for a moment, and I’d like you to think through three words. Maybe grab a piece of paper. You may want to pause the podcast, grab a pen and a paper, because we’re going to write a little bit.

But one of the things I’d love for you to be able to do is when you get your pen and paper, I want you to write down three words that have been regularly spoken. Like you hear them a lot when people describe you or your impact or something that you’ve been used to give to them or to be a part of their life. Write down three words. The three words that come up most often that you’ve heard over the years, and just set them aside for a second.

[00:12:10] And then what I’d like for you to do, I’d like you to think of three times in your life. You may only be able to come up with one. You may only be able to come up with two, but you may be able to come up with 20, but I want you to try to come up with three times in your life where you know that God has made himself real and personal in your world. Three times where you know that you can put a date down You can just write yourself a little shorthand story title, you can write yourself a picture, you can name a place, but three situations or three times in your life where you know that God has made himself real or personal. Or as the Scripture talks about, he made it manifest, able to be grasped in the hand.

[00:13:00] So, when you have those three words together and you have those three situations together. See what they have in common. See if they have anything in common. They may not, but they will all come together in the end. Because when you’re looking at those three times that God has made himself personal, I want you to focus on how you knew it was God.

How did you know that it was God? It could be a circumstance, like he rescued you from some catastrophic accident or some catastrophic situation or potentially catastrophic situation as a child. It may be that time you prayed that God — you’d been a strikeout king in baseball, and maybe you prayed that God would allow you to get a hit. And you not only got a hit this time, but you hit a home run. And it sounds weird, but you believed in your heart that God answered your prayer, and you knew that God was moving in you because there was something different about this one.

It may have been a moment that shook you to the soul. It may have been one of those moments that that God allowed something in your life that not only challenged your faith, but it challenged your being. And then God made himself crystal clear that he was not only present, but he was moving in it. And even though you didn’t have an answer, or you didn’t have the answer you wanted, you were shook to the soul. He was present.

Or maybe it might be one of those times he used you, and then you saw later on that he was using you to answer somebody else’s prayer. Somebody else had been praying, and then God allowed you to be present or to say something or to do something. And they said to you, I was just praying about that. And you had no idea that’s how God was going to use you.

I don’t know what the circumstance is, but I’d like you to write down three times in your life where you know that God made himself real and personal in your world.

So now, when you bring those words back together, and when you bring those times back together, what I’d like for you to do next is I’d like for you to take them and pray over them and ask the Lord why he showed you those. Why, Holy Spirit, did you show me these words and these times? And then take the time in yourself, in that moment, write down what you think you hear, what you believe you hear, what he makes clear to you.

Because by doing so, what you will find is that God will make clear some of the things he’s been doing in your life, how he’s been using your life, how he’s been clarifying his presence in your life. And you’ll start seeing patterns. I firmly believe that as you look back at the stories and as you look back at the words, you’re going to find that they form a pattern. And you’re going to see that God didn’t just do it those three times, but there are other times that he’s done similar things and it’s been in similar ways, and it’s been a similar story. And you’ve come full circle again and again.

Because what that’s showing you is these are some of the things that God has been consistently using your life to reflect his story, to reflect his grace, to reflect his greatness, to reflect his faithfulness, to reflect his ability to hear you in pain, to reflect his ability to celebrate with you. You’re going to be able to see patterns of things that God has placed in your world to help you not just see it yourself, but to help other people.

[00:17:20] The last part of the practice of taking the words, taking the stories, asking God why he showed it to you, and then following the pattern — the last part of the practice is, when you come up with anything that’s clear, I would love for you to find someone that you trust , a dear friend, and I want you to tell them what you found.

Share the story. And I don’t want you to share the details of what I ask you to do: to write down three words, write down three situations. I want you to frame it as a story:

Recently I was listening to a podcast, and I was challenged to give a witness of the God story in my life. And so, I was challenged to … (and then you can lay [out] the things you were asked.) And so, here’s what I came to, and I just feel like I want to share it with you.

And then what you do is you listen to see if it’s validated in them. I’m pretty, pretty sure that what you’ll find is they will acknowledge that’s how God has been using your life, even in them.

I’ve come to see that there are several patterns in my life. And when I look for them, when I look for God in those moments, I call them divine appointments. But when I look for God in those moments, I know he’s present and I know he shows up.

In fact, this very morning, I had one of those circumstances. I had been invited to a prayer breakfast, and the guest speaker was going to be sharing a personal testimony of the tragedy of the loss of a son. She had lost her son during pregnancy, during the late, last stage of pregnancy, and the child was stillborn. And she went through all the gamut of emotions and the struggles of losing her son. Lord, why?

She was a believer. She is a believer. And she struggled. She struggled. It was a soul shaker moment. And she’s one of our local newscasters, and when I heard her story [previously], I began praying for her and for her husband and her family because 30 years ago this year, my wife and I had a very similar circumstance where we lost a daughter at 39 weeks.

And I began praying for them, and I wrote her an email to tell her. I wrote her to share with her that I’d be praying for her and her family, and I understand what that feels like in a small way especially as believers when you’re shaken to your soul. But I never had an opportunity to meet her.

This friend of mine who invited me to this [prayer breakfast], I got there, and I waited around afterwards. And I met her father who’s a pastor, and I just shared with him that I had been praying for him and his family. And I will continue to pray for him and his family.

It was a moment. And I found that what God did was he allowed me to see that there were some circumstances that were virtually identical, not in the loss, but in the conversations that we had with him. And so, he was able to validate for me, God heard me, and I was able to validate for him that God heard him.

And as I told this woman, the story — I got a chance to meet her — as I told her the story, these were her words for me. She said, even though she’s a newscaster, she’s a reluctant public speaker. And she said to me, thank you for sharing what you’ve shared, because what this has done is validated for me that my story, that the story God is writing for me, is one that I have to tell.

Now she had no idea that later today I would be doing this podcast about God’s story through our lives, but the language she used was specific. It was personal because that’s what I’ve learned about God in my own life. God uses specific language that validates for me that he’s speaking to me in that moment.

It’s what I’ve come to know. I can’t miss it. And so, it was a two way street, right? I was validated. She was validated, and we were both moved in this mission of how God is using our lives. Versus whether it’s just a situation that happens. And this is a pattern. This is a pattern for my world.

As I close, I’ll give you one more, brief story. A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting a church, and I had a young person who went to college in that town. Actually, they go to Harvard, and they were up at Harvard, and I wanted to visit them before I came home. But I wasn’t able to meet with them the night I thought. And so, I ended up running to the airport late, trying to get to the airport.

And so, all I had time to do was call this young person and say to them, “Listen, I’m only going to be able to come by and pray over you and give you a hug, but then I’m going to have to get to the airport.”

I meet this young person on the campus, and we start talking and she says to me, “I have to share something with you. Right before you called me to tell me that you were coming, she had just texted a dear friend and said, I feel just a wave of just dark energy and darkness around me. And I just need to know if you could talk because I just need a hug and I need somebody to pray.” And she said, “And then Pastor Jeff, you called me, and you said those very words. Thanks.”

And she started to cry. And I hugged her, I grabbed her hands, and I thanked God for allowing me to pay attention and let him use my words to be an answer to a prayer she was offering. I had no idea, but he did. That’s how God uses our story. That’s how God uses our ideas. That’s how God uses the life that we live.

Will you begin paying attention, too? Will you find out how God makes himself clear to you? If so, I ask you to take those words, take those moments, ask God to make himself clear to you. And then continue to be his witness where you are comfortable, where you’re safe, where you’re comfortable, where you’re uncomfortable, and sometimes where you’re scared to death.

Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you for being the God who sees us, who works with us, who blesses our lives, who invites us to join you in ways that will blow our minds if we would only pay attention. Lord, thank you for this time. And it is my prayer that each person will be able to see your story in their lives, Lord, where you are moving, where you get the glory, where you get the praise, where you validate that you are present, that you are moving, and that you are God.

We can’t thank you enough. And I pray that everyone who hears this podcast, that what they will find is you manifest, personal, real in their past, in their present, and in their future. It is in your glorious name, Lord Jesus, do we pray and thank you by the power of the Spirit to the glory of the Father.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Missional Formation w/ Cara Garrity

Cara: Welcome to GCPodcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. Today, we will be exploring some elements of missional formation. So, go on ahead and settle in. Maybe ground yourself with your feet on the floor, take a couple of deep breaths and invite the Holy Spirit to make this a time of transformation for us.

Let me start us off with a word of prayer.

Loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you for your presence with us. We thank you that you are a God that wants to be known. We thank you that you are a God that invites us into your ministry and mission of making yourself known. We ask you, God, that you would make us tender to be molded and shaped by you, that you would give us willing hearts to be made more into your likeness, to be made more into who you have always meant us to be, God.

We thank you that you are so faithful to guide us, to transform us, to make us new, and to draw us into your very life. We ask your blessing over this time as we reflect and meditate and invite you into our contemplation of what it means to be formed missionally. We ask you, Holy Spirit, to do your work within us; surprise us, do more than we could ever imagine.

We thank you that you are so faithful for your work to be complete. We pray this in your wonderful and your glorious name. Amen.

So first, I want to take a minute to just explore a little bit what it even means to live missionally. That might be a buzzword we are used to hearing if we have been around in the church community for any amount of time.

Let us dig a little bit deeper into what does that look like? What can it look like? Where do we even get that from? What might that mean for us?

I want to look in the Gospel of Matthew. After Jesus’s resurrection, we read in the Gospel of Matthew that he came to his disciples.

In Matthew 28:16-20, we read this.

16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Amen.

This is what has come to be known as the Great Commission, where we as disciples are sent by Jesus on his disciple making mission.

In this English translation, the phrase “therefore go” in the ancient language has a little bit more of this sense of an ongoing action. As we make disciples, there is a sense of we’re living sent. It is a way of being more than just a series of isolated actions.

We are being called to be the sent people of a sending God. Remember, even Jesus himself was the Son of God sent to us, the word of God made flesh to dwell among us. We are called to be the sent people of a sending God.

In his book, Surprise the World, The Five Habits of Highly Missional People, Michael Frost suggests five habits that might open us to the missional formation by the Spirit. I want to read an excerpt for you right here where he talks about these missional habits and how we might think of these habits in participating in Jesus’s mission. He writes this.

Sometimes called missional rhythms or missional practices, missional habits are those habits we foster in our lives that in turn shape our missional outlook. by missional I mean all that we do and say that alerts others to the reign of God.

South African missiologist David Walsh wrote, “Mission is more than and different from recruitment to our brand of religion; it is the alerting of people to the universal reign of God through Christ.” In other words, mission derives from the reign of God. In that respect, the ideas of our mission and God’s kingdom are irrevocably linked. Mission is both the announcement and the demonstration of the reign of God through Christ.

Let me say that again. Mission is both the announcement and the demonstration of the reign of God through Christ.

These five habits that he suggests may open us up to the formation of a missional way of living. Summed up in an acronym, “bells,” B-E-L-L-S.

Now the B stands for bless. What that means is to bless others. There are a lot of diverse ways to bless others. A word of affirmation, an act of kindness fulfilling a need, being a tangible blessing to another person, to a neighbor. And particularly with this habit, we are called, challenged to think beyond the confines beyond the walls of our church community only.

The E stands for eat. That speaks to hospitality, to the spending of quality time with another, to coming around the table and breaking bread, getting to know one another, and sharing in that company. And again, with this we are surrendering to being formed a missionary. So, while it’s wonderful to break bread with those in our church community, we are in these missional habits also challenged to think about and to embody the habit of eating with those outside of the walls of our church community.

Our first L is listen, and this is exhortation, an encouragement to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit, to find those consistent times where you sit in stillness, where you sit in meditation and reflection, where you sit with the word of God, maybe in nature, where you take a prayer walk.

Whatever that looks like for you, season to season, each week to each week. But how are we sitting? How are we being still? How are we pausing, stepping aside from the day-to-day rhythms to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit? What is God doing? What is he saying to us? What is he showing us? What is he doing in our very midst, within us and through us?

He is an active God. Let us listen for his voice.

The second L is learning Christ. Now this is a deep embodied, holistic learning of Christ. This goes beyond knowing some facts or fancy theological terms. But this is talking about the whole-person discipleship, being formed into Christ likeness, learning Christ as in knowing him with your entire being and growing more and more deeply into his life and his person, being drawn into him, being formed into his likeness as a disciple. Learning Christ, not just with our minds, but with our minds, our hearts, our souls, our bodies. Learning Christ to be like him.

The S is sent. This S for sent is meant to be an encouragement to consistently reflect and even tangibly journal the ways that we have been living sent, the ways that that week we have alerted our community, our neighbors, our friends, our family, to the reign of God through Jesus.

How did I live sent today? How did I live sent this week, this month? What did that look like?

And the idea of this phrase, formational habit, is that as we reflect on that, we begin to identify more and more what that looks like, what it looks like for us. And to be shaped into people who proclaim and demonstrate the gospel, the reign of Jesus Christ as second nature.

We see that as we are formed and as we surrender to being formed in mission through various habits, this BELLS framework is a helpful one that we may consider — less, eat, listen, learn, and sent.

A second guide that I want to propose to us today is a simple phrase that we will think about is where. Where are we sent? Where do we practice these habits? Where do we live missionally? Where we live, where we work, and where we play.

Remember Matthew 28:19-20.

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Amen.

We are living sent, and it is an ongoing action, and so we are living sent in our everyday lives. And what do we do in our everyday lives? We live, we work, we play. Where are our typical rhythms? Where do we spend our time? Who do we spend our time with?

Where do we spend our time that we do not even necessarily pay particular attention to that if we did start paying particular attention to, we would start to listen and hear the Spirit’s voice and see what God is doing? And so how do we begin to see God at work everywhere we go? And how do we proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom of an extraordinary king in ordinary moments, wherever we live, wherever we work, and wherever we play?

[00:13:29] Now I want us to dive into a couple of reflective exercises. As we explore and continue together to surrender ourselves to missional formation to say, yes, Jesus, you have sent us, continue to form me as a sent person. Continue to give me and make me feet that are willing to go.

The first thing I want us to do is meditate on the passage, John 20:19-22. This passage we find in the Gospel of John, again after Jesus’ resurrection, when he comes to the disciples, and he sends them. Meditate on this passage with me.

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

As you reflect on this passage, I want you to pause this podcast, as much time as you want, to reflect, to meditate on these questions, but imagine yourself seeing, touching the hands inside of Jesus just as these disciples did. What comes up for you?

Read this passage or hear this passage again and receive the breath of Jesus, the Holy Spirit. Notice. What is your response? And hear Jesus saying the words, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” to you. How does that feel?

So once more.

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Now I want to invite you into reflecting through these two frameworks that we were introduced to today. Explore what they could look like in your own life to begin practicing them and experiencing what it might mean in your life, for your formation.

[00:17:11] Let us return to this concept of where we live, work, and play as the places where we are sent — our ordinary everyday spaces and places, rhythms, our ordinary and everyday lives.

Where are the places that you live and work and play? How can you nurture meaningful relationships in these places? How have you nurtured meaningful relationships in these places? And then if you do not live in your church neighborhood, how might you be able to create an intentional space of live or work or play in that neighborhood?

[00:17:56] And then bells, B-E-L-L-S, bless, eat, listen, learn, sent. Which of these is most natural for you? Which is most challenging? What would it look like to consistently practice one of these over the next month? How do you want to respond to God’s invitation to form missional rhythms in your everyday life?

[00:18:27] And finally, I have three more questions of reflection for us. And again, please pause this podcast, take as much time as you need to reflect, to pray, to journal, to doodle, as you consider these questions and surrender yourself to the work of the Spirit and transformation and formation into Christ’s loving mission for all his people.

What joys and fears come to mind when I think about living a sent life? What joys and fears come to mind when I think about living a sent life? What do I have to gain as Jesus forms me in his likeness and mission? What might I have to surrender? Who has God made me to be? What gifts, passions, quirks, stories, scars, triumphs are He revealing in me? How might the Spirit use who I am personally to form me in mission?

I want to wrap up today with a prayer of blessing over all of us. This prayer is written by Ted Loder and is from his book of prayers, Gorillas of Grace, Prayers for the Battle. This prayer is titled, “Teach Me Your Ways.”

Teach me Your ways, Lord,

And make me aware of the miracles of life,

Teach me Your ways, Lord,

Teach me Your ways, Lord,

Teach me Your ways, Lord,

Teach me Your ways, Lord,

Thank you for listening to this episode of GCPodcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders. So, invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Lectio Divina w/ Cara Garrity

Cara Garrity: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, I, your host, Cara Garrity, will introduce and guide us through the practice of Lectio Divina.

What is the practice of Lectio Divina? The term Lectio Divina means divine reading, and it is a practice that originates back to the early church. One way to think about it is a practice of praying through the scriptures. It is a guided way of engaging the scriptures in an immersive, transformational way.

There are four steps or four movements that we move through in the Lectio Divina. The first is reading, second is meditation, third is prayer, and fourth is contemplation. For each of these steps of the Lectio Divina practice, we read the chosen passage of scripture and engage in it through each of these four: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.

This practice of Lectio Divina can be practiced either alone, personally, or together, as a group.

In preparation, I want to invite you to open yourself to the following, as we prepare to engage this practice of Lectio Divina:

First, that Jesus, the living Word, speaks to us through his written word.

Second, I invite you to open yourself to the fact that God is a self-revealing God that wants to be known by us. He will reveal himself to us through soaking in the scriptures.

That we are invited into transformation in our relationship with God.

That God is present with us as we read his written word.

If you are doing this practice together with the group, some guidelines to help you: between each movement of the Lectio Divina, you can pause to give each member of the group a moment to share. Although, that’s not required for each person to share; it is optional.

Approach this group sharing with the posture that God speaks to us through others, in relationships with one another. As you create this space for sharing in a group Lectio Divina, it is not a space for discussion, but a space for listening. You will just want to create space for people to share, not really for response and discussion after each movement.

The last piece of the Lectio Divina that I want to mention before we guide through this practice and go through it together is that you typically want to use a shorter passage or section of scripture [with a group].

Today we are going to use a passage that comes with the RCL for this month of June, and we are going to be reading from Mark. Mark 5:21-43.

Now using the Lectio Divina along with the seasons of the worship calendar the RCL is a fun way to follow the seasons of the worship calendar. But that is not the only way to practice Lectio Divina. That is just what we are going to be doing today.

Before we get started, I want to say a prayer over us. I want to invite you to get comfortable in a quiet space. Sit, get grounded, put your feet on the floor, turn off distractions. Take a minute to quiet your mind. Even pause this podcast for 30 seconds, two minutes, just quiet yourself.

Let us pray this prayer together, titled “Help Me Listen” from Gorillas of Grace, Prayers for the Battle, written by Todd Loder.

O Holy One,

Amen.

So, I invite you now. To participate with me in the practice of Lectio Divina using Mark 5:21-43. We are going to go through each step of the Lectio Divina together.

[05:58] So again, I invite you to quiet yourself. Sit in a comfortable position. You can close your eyes if that is what is comfortable to you. We are going to start with the first step, which is the reading. You can just listen along to my reading. You can follow along if that is what is most comfortable to you.

The question I want you to think about as you listen or read along is what word or phrases jump out at you? What images in this passage speak to you? Let us read.

21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

What word or phrases jump out at you? What images? What connects with you as you hear and read this passage? Take a moment, pause the podcast for a minute or two. What connects you?

[10:08] Now, together, let us move on to meditation. We will read the passage once more, this time meditate on the words, the phrases, the images that stood out to you. And just sit with these images in the presence of God.

Let them wash over you. What brings you comfort or challenge? What do you notice as you sit with this image, with these phrases, as you meditate on them?

21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

What have you noticed as you meditate on the words, phrases, and images that stood out to you?

What has brought you comfort? What has challenged you? What have you seen in a new light? What do you relate to?

[14:23] Now, let us move on to prayer together. As we listen to this passage, again, come with a posture of prayer. What do you hear God saying to you through these words, these phrases, these images that have stood out to you?

What is God saying to you through these scriptures, the living Word through his spoken word? What do you want to say to God? What praises do you have to lift? What thanksgiving? What petitions?

Let us approach his written words with a posture of prayer.

21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

What have you heard speaking to you through this passage? What rises in you to speak to God as you hear this passage read?

[18:51] Finally, let us enter a phase of contemplation. What have you received from God as you have prayed through this scripture? What might he be inviting you into? What transformation, conversion of mind, heart, and life is God inviting you into? How is he meeting you right now in his presence during this passage and drawing you deeper into who he is transforming you to the image of Christ?

21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Take a moment, pause the podcast.

What have you received from God as you have prayed through the scripture? What may he be inviting you into? What conversion, transformation of mind, heart, life, is God inviting you into?

Now let us pray.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you so much that you are a God who wants to be known by us. We thank you for revealing yourself to us. We thank you that you are a God that is present with us. We thank you for your written words. We thank you for speaking to us through your written words.

We thank you for transforming us through your written words and we thank you for this practice of Lectio Divina. I thank you for all the ways that you have spoken to each one of us personally and communally. As we engage in your written word in this way, as we pray through your scriptures in the confidence that it is your living Word that brings them to life, that it is your living Word that transforms us as we read, that it is your living Word that draws us in to life everlasting, that it is your living Word that brings all of this meaning.

We thank you, God. We thank you for being present here with us. And we thank you for the wisdom of the church historical, for this practice of sitting quietly at your feet, meditating on your scriptures, spending time with you, allowing you to transform us, speak to us, form us more into your image as your people, your image bearers here.

We thank you and praise you for being so faithful to guide us and we pray this in your holy and wonderful name, amen.

[25:19] Now I invite you all to reflect on a few questions. Whether on your own, or if you are going through this Lectio Divina practice with a group, or even your leadership team, let us reflect on some questions together. You can pause this podcast in between each question to give yourself as much time as you need to reflect in the ways that you need to. You can journal these reflections. You can discuss them if you are in a group, whatever is beneficial to you.

The first question I want us to think about as we have gone through this practice of the Lectio Divina together is what was this practice like for you? What challenged you? What was life giving about this practice?

The second question I want us to reflect on is how might this practice contribute to the growth of healthy leadership, healthy teams, and healthy church rhythms in the life of your local congregation?

Finally, what more do you want to know about practices of praying the scriptures? How might you go about learning or immersing yourself in such practices?

I want to thank you for joining me today and going through this guided practice of the Lectio Divina, whether it was the first time for you, and this was a new practice, or whether it was the 50th or 100th time for you.

Thank you for joining me. This is a wonderful and beautiful transformative practice that the church has held for many generations. Until next time, you all keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Team Building w/ Cara Garrity

Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience.

Cara Garrity: In this episode, I (your host, Cara Garrity) will lead us through some team building experiences and exercises.

Now today’s exercises are best experienced with your ministry team. So, consider dedicating an upcoming team meeting, or at least scheduling 20 minutes or so to team building in your next meeting agenda.

[00:40] We know that an important piece of GCI’s healthy church vision is Team Based —Pastor Led ministry. But there are a lot of diverse ways to lead a ministry. What is so great about team-based ministry?

When we minister alongside one another on teams, we reflect the unity and diversity of the body of Christ. Let us consider 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26 together. And it says:

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many members yet one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, 24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

Amen.

[03:18] I want to encourage us to see our ministry teams as a reflection of the body of Christ — many parts, but one body.

And if we do this, how might this shape the way that we approach team-based ministry? And I want you to pause and, for a couple minutes, discuss this question with your team. How might this shape the way that we approach team-based ministry if we were to see our teams as a reflection of the body of Christ — many parts, but one body?

Now think about, practically speaking, how this might shape the way that we approach the practical aspects of

How might this image of the body of Christ inform how we conduct our teams in that sense?

Take a couple minutes with your team to brainstorm and discuss this.

[04:45] Now your team, I want to suggest to you, is a unique expression of the body of Christ. I want us to take some time now to discern and celebrate who God has brought together on your team to serve for this season.

So let’s start with this — and I would encourage you, especially for those visual folks on your team, if you haven’t gotten these supplies already, get a big piece of poster board paper, one of those post-it papers, some markers, some pens, or even if you just have a blank piece of paper on the table that everyone can see and something to write with. Grab some of those, and we’re going to use that for this exercise.

And then the first thing that I want us to start with is a reminder of the purpose of your team. What brings your team together? What is your purpose? For what do you exist?

Now, this may come, for the purpose of this exercise, for your team in the form of your local congregation’s mission and vision statement. This will come in the form of GCI’s vision of Healthy Church or mission statement of “Living and sharing the gospel.”

Whatever that looks like for you, what brings your team together? What is your purpose?

And now what I want you to do is take some time and go around your team. Each member, I want you to answer the question: how do you uniquely contribute to the purpose of this team? And take two minutes to quietly reflect on this before you start answering this question.

[06:44] You are going to go ahead and pause this podcast while you go through and take those two minutes of silent reflection and then share as a team.

The question is: how do you uniquely contribute to the purpose of this team?

And now as you are sharing, I want you on that poster board, paper, whatever it is, draw an outline of a body. And as each member shares, label the various parts of the body with the keywords, the unique gifts or skills or passions that they contribute to the purpose of the team. And just label the various parts of the body with those keywords or gifts, whatever that is, that comes up in your discussion.

How does each member of the team uniquely contribute to the purpose of the team? What gifts, talents, skills, passions?

Now look at this image that you have created. It is a visual representation of your team as the body of Christ. And I want you to look at it and to praise God for who he has brought together to your team. And to see that he has brought together different giftings, different talents, different passions, different skill sets.

And I want you all to look at that and talk about the specific ways or the specific, I guess combinations or expressions of that, that you see on your team. What sticks out with you?

What do you appreciate and celebrate the expression of the body of Christ that God has brought together? What do you notice? And then I want you to take a few minutes and just praise God for bringing you all together. And I want you to affirm one another that you all need one another, that you all belong as members of the body of Christ and an expression of the body of Christ on this team.

[09:06] So go ahead and pause this podcast and take a few minutes to do that and celebrate your unique expression that is represented visually by this drawing.

Now, the next exercise that I want us to do, to consider is if we are considering or engaging with our ministry teams as a reflection and expression of the body of Christ, then we are going to embody this belief that we belong one to another, that we are connected, that we are made one in Christ. What would it look like to commit to belonging to one another as team members?

[09:59] Go ahead and pause the podcast and discuss that as a team for a few minutes. What would it look like to commit to belonging to one another as team members, to be united in Christ?

Here are some simple suggestions that you can start out with. You could rotate prayer partners after each meeting. Whether you have weekly meetings or monthly meetings, whatever that looks like, you just get a prayer partner on that team. And you share your prayer requests, and you follow up and you pray with that person once a week or during that month.

You add prayer for one another to each meeting agenda, every single time you meet. You take turns starting each meeting with a liturgical prayer or spiritual formation exercise that is meaningful to each one of you. You are bringing that expression of who God has made you to be, that gifting, that uniqueness to one another.

And you are growing together and forming in Christlikeness together, with one another. Maybe consider some practices and committing to some practices like this together as a team.

[00:11:25] And for right now, what I want to ask you to do is to take about maybe five to 10 minutes — depending on the size of your team or however this flows for you all —and I want for each person to pray for the person on your right. I want you to thank God for what they bring to this team. And you can use the visual representation from the previous exercise, as a reminder, as something to come back to. I want you to thank God for what they bring to this team, affirm their belonging to the body, their belonging on this team, that their participation on the team is important, and that we celebrate with one another.

Take five to ten minutes for each member on the team to pray for one another, the person on your right. Go ahead and pause this podcast and do that with one another now.

So, I want to encourage us to remember that the teams we serve are more than just production lines, groups of people that we complete checklists alongside to get things done in the church or gears in the machine to make sure things happen and get done. We serve on teens because in Christ, we are many who are made one, each uniquely, fearfully, and wonderfully made, brought together to form the one body of Christ and in him. We belong not only to him, but to one another. We come together in cooperation to be his hands and feet, to participate in his present ministry, in our midst.

And what a beautiful thing that these teams that we get to serve on, that we get to build out in our local congregations, to be a local expression of this body. So let me pray for us.

Lord God, I thank you so much. Father, Son, and Spirit, you yourself are, in your very being, unity. In diversity and unity, Father, Son, and Spirit, three in one.

I thank you that you, Jesus, have brought us, your people, many into one in your body. We thank you for being so good to us. We thank you for giving us according to your will for your good, good purposes. And we thank you for the immense privilege it is to participate in your ministry. And that we do not do it alone, but that we do it primarily with you, that we participate in what you’re doing, but that we get to do it alongside one another too.

We thank you for your relationship and community. And we thank you that it reflects who you are. I pray for a blessing for all our teams. That you would continue to grow them with one another, that they would continue to mature and expand as expressions of your body. That people would be able to operate in the gifts and the skills and the talents that you’ve given them to serve those in their neighborhoods, to join in what you are doing in their midst.

I thank you for being so faithful to guide us, and I praise you in your holy name. Amen.

[15:19] So together as a team, I want to offer a few reflection questions as we have completed these two exercises together as a team.

So, I want to leave you all with the encouragement of Ephesians 4: 1-16. And it draws us back to the purpose of coming together, diverse, and united, as ministry servants alongside one another in his church. So, Ephesians 4 says:

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,

9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

May it be so in our teams, in our congregations, throughout our denomination. Until next time, friends, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.

Creative Expressions of Worship w/ Lucy Santibanez-Enerio

Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. In this episode, we welcome Lucy Santibanez-Enerio, who will lead us through creative expressions of worship.

We invite you to co-create your own experiences of spiritual formation through personal and communal practices. We believe that through such personal and communal practices, we open ourselves and surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us.

May the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst grow us up into the healthiest participants in the ministry of Christ that we can be to the glory of the Father. Amen.

Lucy: Hello friends, my name is Lucy. I grew up in the Philippines, and I started being involved in the music ministry when I was 10 years old. One of my core memories in being transformed through worship is when at a young age, during Sunday service, we were singing the song, “Knowing You, Jesus.” And I looked around the fellowship hall of our local congregation, and I see all ages and all generations who were connecting to God, declaring that there is no other greater thing in life than getting to know their personal Savior.

Since then, I’ve always felt that I, and all people, are called to pursue God’s presence because there is peace in his presence, there is hope, joy, and rest in his presence. I found that God has a way of speaking to me personally through music. A few years down the road, I found myself being drawn to psychology for my undergraduate studies, and eventually I completed graduate degrees in music therapy.

But primarily, all I really wanted to do was worship God and see people join near to God in worship. So, through it all, I continue to be part of worship teams, and I currently serve as a volunteer worship leader and music team coordinator at GC Steele Creek in Charlotte, North Carolina, all by the grace of God, according to his plans.

Today, we will be exploring creative expressions of worship that extend beyond the familiar congregational worship gatherings to a more personal spiritual expression. So, whether you’re a seasoned worshipper or someone looking to deepen your connection with the Lord, we hope you are able to find meaning and resource from this experience.

Our theme for today’s practice is “Making Room to Encounter God in the Mundane.”

Like many of us, I am always in awe of sunrise and sunsets. One, because of the beauty and the mystery of the rising and the setting ball of energy millions of miles away from us interacting with our skies and setting off awe inspiring colors.

And two, in a way, this phenomenon that we often tend to overlook feels like God’s way of taking care of us, motivating us to wake up and also signaling us to take the rest that we need. Creation is reflecting the beauty of our Creator, and I can’t help but break into song about God’s goodness when I witness the beauty of his creation. Psalm 19, verse 1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

Human beings are made for worship. In the posture of worship, we fall into the arms of God and saying, “Have your way in me, Lord.” Disciplines of worship put us in a place to be receptive and responsive to the Holy Spirit’s movements and invitation. The discipline of worship focuses our attention on the beauty of the Trinity, the source of all that is good, true, and beautiful.

There are so many ways and forms of worship, more than we recognize in the ordinary moments of life. We worship when we come together in celebration of God’s goodness. We worship when we come to the foot of the cross to lament an expression of our grief.

We worship in our giving, in holy communion, in making meals for others, in making spaces livable and beautiful, and in so many forms – crafts, woodwork, poetry, visual arts, movement, music. After all, God is the ultimate artist, the creator of the heavens and the earth. he communicates through his creation and relates with his creation.

We come to him to worship individually and as a congregation. We worship in silence and solitude or in holy roars of praise.

The Bible tells us of how David actively pursued God’s presence in worship. In the book of Psalm and 1 and 2 Samuel, we learn about David’s raw expressions of praise to God amidst life’s highs and lows.

Whether it’s in periods of grief and anger or moments of shame, David cries out for forgiveness. In times of joy and excitement, David praises God by dancing and exuberant singing. In moments of need, David surrenders his human desire for control, and instead seeks and aligns himself with God’s heart. he teaches us to do the same.

David’s example shows us that worship isn’t about putting on a facade of perfection, but by being vulnerable and humbly turning our hearts towards God, regardless of our circumstances. Worship includes but does not have to be solely about emotion. It’s about recognizing God’s worthiness of praise, even when life feels chaotic or unfair.

Being able to worship and find hope is one of the many gifts that God has blessed us with. Regardless of our circumstance, God has given us the ability to come to him and rest in him. Worship is more than an event. It is the posture of our hearts.

So, we now recognize that worship isn’t confined to a specific style or practice. It’s a personal journey that is expressed both inward and outward.

In the next few minutes, we’ll explore how we can take our creative expressions and offer them as an act of worship. So today I invite you to consider the act of creating, or the expression of creativity, as a form of worship. Whether it’s through music, art, poetry, or other forms of expression, our creativity can be a meaningful way to connect with our Lord. It’s about offering our time, thoughts, skills, and our whole being as an act of worship.

I personally love to spend my time with the Lord through soft instrumental music, as I feel like it serves as a container of my experiences and sacred interactions with our Lord. It is a way for me to make room for God in our busy day-to-day lives, by finding pockets of time to be in tune with God and be transformed by his presence. This will be different for everyone, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be complicated or long-winded, but it is personal and intentional.

So now, if you are inclined, I invite you to grab a notebook, or maybe some coloring tools, or any other crafts or tools that you are drawn to. If you are musically inclined, you may grab an instrument. You can also take this time to simply listen and receive what the Lord has for you.

We will spend the next few minutes exploring creative expressions of worship. This is your time to connect with our Lord in a way that feels personal and authentic to you. I will be playing instrumental music to guide our time together, but for now, take a couple of grounding breaths.

Feel free to receive. And open your senses to the Lord. Take a moment to ground yourself in God’s love. he continues to provide for you and has invited you to wake up today and rest in him. Close your eyes, if you can, and invite his presence into your safe space.

Three simple ways to prepare our hearts to worship are to recognize, receive, and respond.

Recognize by making room in your heart and thoughts. Invite and anticipate God’s presence. He is the ultimate shepherd who invites us to lay down in green pastures. He leads us beside still waters and restores our souls.

Allow the following verses to wash over you as you receive his word.

Psalm 8:3-4 — When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

Psalm 19:1 — The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of his hands.

Psalm 24:1-2 — The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.

[Repeat]

The next couple of minutes is your time to respond through your personal creative expression. Feel free to write, draw, or journal, pray, or even sing. You are free to reflect on the earlier verses or lean into how the Lord interacts with you as you respond to him.

As we conclude our time together, feel free to reflect on the creative expressions you explored with our Creator today. Consider how these expressions can become a regular part of your worship beyond the Sunday service. The Lord speaks to us in many ways, and he has given us gifts for us to use to connect with him and serve his people.

May your God-inspired creativity be a source of meaningful connection with our Lord, and may you find pockets of time to make room daily beyond our Sunday gatherings.

Cara: Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.