Chris Hodges, the pastor of Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, had some wonderfully challenging things to say to the Large Church Initiative conference I attended last week.  He related all of ministry to the 4 cups of the passover – the cup of sanctification, the cup of deliverance, the cup of redemption, and the cup of praise.  It was a good outline for ministry and really highlighted for me one of the struggles many churches have – we are missing a step in discipleship!

Typically, here is what happens in a church.  Someone comes to understand Jesus as their Savior and Lord and comes into a relationship with Him.  We call this ‘being saved’.  We then immediately try to get them caught up on discipleship, which means teaching them to read the scripture, take part in worship, be a part of a group, etc.  And then we also encourage them to take an active part in ministry, serving God either in or outside of the church.  A basic, simple plan that often works to reshape lives.  But it does so without a deliberate focus on one step – being delivered from sin.

What I mean is this, we jump right from being saved to being discipled without taking the time to deliberately deal with the sin that we are being saved from!  We accept forgiveness and move on without taking a decided look at the sin that we still cart around.  Being saved doesn’t mean that we immediately are cleansed from the mess that surrounds our lives.  Usually we just limp along, hoping that we will figure it out ourselves.  We don’t ackowledge that we still have struggles and, as a church, we do little to help people overcome sin.  We have lots of classes on how to study the bible but few about how to heal broken marriages, overcome addiction, get our finances in order, or be a parent that builds children of faith.  We skip our problems and try to get past them somehow so we can become disciples.

I wonder what the church would look like if we took the time and effort to really look at how we overcome sin?  What would it be like if we were willing to acknowledge that we are still dirty with sin even after we are saved and that we need help getting our life in order?  Maybe it’s time for us to look at discipleship in a new way – not just about learning and active ministry but also about restoring ourselves to the people God created us to be.

QR Tag linking to huhns.org

I am adding something new to my sermon notes this Sunday – a QR tag that links to this website.  For those of you unfamiliar, a QR tag is that squiggly box to the right that you can scan with a newer model cell phone (like the Iphone or Android based phones.)  Some of you reading this likely got here by scanning this tag with your phone.  If so, welcome!  I’m glad you are here!

The QR tag is really a ‘next step’ into a larger arena that the church as a whole has not done well adapting towards.  We do well, for example, in using print media for distributing information and for ads.  To a lesser extent we also do a decent job extending information via a website, even if many churches (including ours) are in need of a website makeover.  But in a world that is quickly adapting to text messages, twitter, and facebook as primary means of connection, we struggle to use these ‘social media’ in consistent and strategic ways.  Sure, we may have a facebook page for our organization (or even a twitter account), but we don’t often use it as part of an overall strategy for communication.

This is where we need your help.  What ideas do you have for us as a church on how we can use facebook, twitter, and to a lesser extent texting to communicate with a generation that uses these tools daily to get the information they need about what is going on in the lives of their community?

(Special thanks also to Ryan Smith for his previous post on churches using twitter.)