Book Notes: Waking to God’s Dream

Waking to God’s Dream: Spiritual Leadership and Church Renewal (1999) by Dick Wills (now a UMC Bishop)


It is not what you are now that is important, but what God wants you to be and what you can be with faith.

A vision without a task is just a dream. A task without a vision is pure drudgery. When you combine a vision and a task it can become the hope of the world.

A vision is seeing not what is now, but what can be and will be in the future.

God put eyes in the front so that when we look backward, we get a stiff neck.

God selects one person to announce the vision on behalf of all the other people. God plants the vision secretly in the hearts of people. They cannot see the vision until the person God has chosen reveals it. Once the vision is announced, it must be confirmed by the people for whom the vision is given. God plants the vision secretly in the hearts of God’s people, even though they might not be aware of it. However, when it is announced, it wins acceptance from those committed to God because God has made it their vision, secretly, sometime before.

God is always ready to give a new vision when the old vision comes to maturity. Otherwise, the vision simply dies and perishes. Mainline denominations are declining because leaders have not been willing to listen to the God who is seeking to reproduce the vision for a new day.

I wanted to be a part of what God was blessing!

John Wesley was asked what could reasonably be expected of a Methodist preacher: “To reform the Nation and the Church and to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”

We had substituted meetings for ministry.

My weariness came from having left behind a daily walk with God, substituting in its place taking control and wanting to be successful in the eyes of others.

Went to South Africa- I began to wonder how these people, living under such difficult and violent conditions could have such joy?

Joy comes from walking with God and is not dependent on external circumstances.

An openness to begin the journey of choosing to be part of what God wanted to bless rather than my trying to get God to bless what I was doing.

So I began to pray each day for God to help me and my church be part of what God wanted to bless.

God blesses obedience. I understand obedience as choosing to seek and discern the will of God as a follower of Jesus. Obedience is to choose daily to give my life to God.

Belonging to my church for many people was like belonging to a club rather than to the church of Jesus Christ. Seldom did I sense people yearning for the things of God. Being a member of the church was simply synonymous with being a good citizen, a good American. What I would call “cultural Christians.” Christianity was to be learned, not experienced. Cultural Christians subscribe to a kind of hen house logic: “If you sit in a hen house, it will make you a chicken.” If you attend worship, you will be a Christian. Having a personal experience with Jesus Christ was replaced with simply attending worship.

I began to see my preaching as an invitation to become a follower of Jesus. I started preaching as though I were speaking to a group of people who knew nothing about Christianity. I was calling our people to make a choice to be fully devoted followers of Jesus and to claim the new life that I knew God wanted for each of them.

Jesus set out to change the world by choosing a small group of people to disciple.

Not my ideas, but a willingness to be part of what God is blessing.

In order to know if this vision was really a word from God or just a clever attempt by my imagination to speak on God’s behalf, I became convinced that I had to share the vision with the congregation for a year. 3-week sermon series to outline vision, then preached on it monthly. At first people were indifferent to this new vision. As the year moved along, I heard from laity in stronger and stronger ways that confirmed this new vision.

Lifted the vision repeatedly as pastor, asked each area to justify what it was doing by the vision.

As I read the NT, I could find only one place where the voting majority ruled (Acts 27). I believe the church was never meant to be a democracy. We in the church are to function under a theocracy. The only thing that matters is the will of God. We quit voting. We decided that if an activity focuses on our vision statement and is supported by Scripture, then those proposing the new ministry could begin.

In meetings, Wills asked committee to pray silently on an issue for ten minutes. What is God’s will in this issue? After ten minutes, he asked if anyone had a word from God that would be a negative, a concern, or a “not now” that the group should hear.

The greater the relationship, the fewer the rules.

Raise up and consecrate lay pastors to care for and lead the ministries of the church.

Administrative groups need to be seen as ministry and not business. Lay Pastors are the spiritual leaders for their action group in the church.

Lay Pastors are not chosen by the church or by the pastor of the church, but they are called by God.

The first requirement is that each Lay Pastor must commit to a daily time of prayer and Scripture reading.

Lay Pastors are the basic caregivers of the congregation.

As pastor, I submit myself to the authority of the Lay Pastor when I am on their turf (ministry area, small group).

Chad Walsh: “I suspect that Satan has called off his attempt to convert people to agnosticism. After all, if a man travels far enough away from Christianity, he is liable to see it in perspective and decide it is true. It is much safer from Satan’s point of view, to vaccinate a man with a mild case of Christianity so as to protect him from the real disease.”

People choose to be comfortable over choosing to be faithful.

Daily walk with God.

Individual change precedes organizational change.

Focus on leadership, not management.

Strive first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33)

For spiritual leaders, the cross is not something laid upon us by God. It is something we must pick up. As a spiritual leader, as soon as we decide to fulfill the specific purpose God has for us, we pick up our cross. It is not necessary that we should know what God’s purpose is. It is necessary only that we decide to fulfill it. To pick up my cross, I must learn to lay down my right to myself. Gradually, it dawns upon a spiritual leader that good work does not produce fruit. Dying to self and doing God’s will produces fruit.

God unfolds revelation moment by moment.

Prayers for Church, Community and Pastor

At Austell First UMC, we are building a praying church. We began by getting some people to agree to pray for the church and pastor on a certain day of each week. We now have each day covered by at least two people. We provided them with this prayer sheet and also gave it out to the entire congregation to pray as available. Credit goes to Terry Teykl for a great deal of this (www.renewalministries.com).

Consistent Prayers for AFUMC

Lord Jesus, we desperately seek and pray for a movement of God to happen in our church and in our community. Move powerfully in our midst. (Acts 2:2-4)

Lord, we yearn for spiritual revival in the lives of our people and in the life of our church. Make us new creations individually and also as a church. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Pour out your Spirit upon us. (Acts 2:17).

Lord, bless our church leaders with faith, vision, dreams, boldness, courage, and persistence. (Acts 4:31)

Lord, fill me and every person of AFUMC with the Holy Spirit so that we might act with boldness to fulfill your mission. (Acts 4:31)

Lord of the harvest, rise up laborers for the harvest within our church and send Austell First UMC new laborers to join your mission here. (Matthew 9:38)

Lord, provide mightily the needed resources to do your work in this community. (Malachi 3:10)

O Lord, give me and AFUMC a burden for those far from God. (Romans 10:1)

Thank you for your prevenient grace. We praise you Father God for the work you are doing to draw people towards you. May AFUMC be faithful to do our part in this work. (John 6:44)

Almighty God, open the hearts of the people of our Austell community (Acts 16:41) and open doors that we might share the mystery of Christ with them (Colossians 4:3).

Holy Spirit, add to our numbers those who become believers and turn towards the Lord. (Acts 11:21, 2:47, 5:14, 9:42)

Lord, pull our church together around our vision of BLESS. May it become who we are and not just what we do. May it glorify you. May it accomplish your purposes. Continue to lead and direct us in discerning how best to live out this vision. (Matthew 18:19)

Heal within our church any hurt feelings, past wounds, confusion, bitterness, or discouragement. Send a spirit of forgiveness. (Ephesians 4:31)

Forgive our church for how we have fallen short in your desires and dreams for us. (Romans 3:23)

By your power, Lord, bring about church renewal and revival at AFUMC.

By your power, bring about community transformation. In your name, allow AFUMC to be a catalyst for that community transformation.

Help us to not grow weary in doing what you desire Lord, for you assure us that we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)


Consistent Prayers for Pastor Brett

· Fill Pastor Brett with your Holy Spirit. Anoint him. Bless him.
· Speak to him powerfully this week as he prepares the sermon.
· Lord, bless him with faith, vision, dreams, boldness, courage, energy, and persistence.
· Lord, lead and guide Pastor Brett as he listens to you for direction for our church.
· Protect him from forces of darkness (spiritual and earthly) that wish to stop your mission here.
· Keep Pastor Brett focused on things above (Colossians 3:1-3)
· Clothe him with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. (Colossians 3:12)
· Bless Pastor Brett with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22)

Book Notes: Radical

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
By David Platt

Note: I highly recommend this book. These notes/quotes are great, but will be fully comprehended by reading the book.


We’ve replaced what’s radical about our faith with what is comfortable. We’re settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

Yes, you are abandoning everything you have, but you are also gaining more than you could have in any other way.

We may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead we may be worshiping ourselves.

Bonhoeffer- “When Christ calls a man, he binds him come and die.”

The cost of nondiscipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him.

The price of our nondiscipleship is high for those without Christ. It is high also for the poor of this world.

Christians shrink back from self-denying faith and settle into self-indulging faith.

The gospel does not prompt you to mere reflections; the gospel requires a response.

We desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical.

The goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God.

Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?

The message of biblical Christianity is not “God loves me, period,” as if we were the object of our own faith. The message of biblical Christianity is “God loves me so that I might make him- his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness- know among all nations.” Now God is the object of our faith, and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is.

Where in the Bible is missions ever identified as an optional program in the church? Jesus commanded us to go to all nations. We have taken this command, though, and reduced it to a calling- something that only a few people receive. We have assigned the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges of Christianity for us all.

What if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actually selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which he created us?

God is committed to providing abundant resources in support of those who are living according to his purpose.

Christians: we live decent lives in decent homes with decent jobs and decent families as decent citizens.

Disciplining Christians involves propelling Christians into the world to risk losing their lives for the sake of others.

While caring for the poor is not the basis of our salvation, it is the evidence of salvation. The faith in Christ that saves us from our sins involves an internal transformation that has external implications. If there is no sign of caring for the poor in our lives, then there is reason to at least question whether Christ is in our hearts.

No teachers (including Jesus) in the NT ever promise material wealth as a reward for obedience.

Jesus doesn’t give options for people to consider; he gives commands for people to obey.

Jesus never intended to be one voice among many; he intends to be the voice.

Set a cap on our lifestyles so that we can give more.

We are tempted to settle for throwing our scraps to the poor.

The logic that says, “I can’t do everything, so I won’t do anything,” is straight from hell.

I don’t want to miss eternal treasure because I settle for earthly trinkets.

Good coverage of “Will people who haven’t heard about Jesus go to hell?” Goal is not to try and find an answer to it; our goal is to alleviate the question altogether.

The will of God is for you and me to give our lives urgently and recklessly to making the gospel known among all peoples, particularly those who have never even heard of Jesus.

Book Notes: Switch

This the best book I have ever read on change (and I have read a lot). You need to buy the book to get the most out of it. tons of examples.

Switch: How To Change Things When Change is Hard
By Chip Heath and Dan Heath

For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently. Ultimately, all change efforts boil down to the same mission: Can you get people to start behaving in a new way?

Analogy borrowed from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis
Imagine a person riding an elephant. Rider is our Rational side. Elephant is our emotional side. Rider has reins, but when elephant disagrees, the elephant wins.

You must do three things:
• Direct the Rider
• Motivate the Elephant
• Shape the Path


Direct the Rider: Follow the Bright Spots

Search for bright spots in the current culture!!! (successful efforts worth emulating) What’s working and how can we do more of it? (instead people usually ask, “What’s broken and how can we fix it? NO!) Clone the bright spots.

Knowledge does not change behavior. People need to act their way into a new way of thinking. Help them to see that they can do it.

Too much analysis can doom the effort. In tough times, the Rider sees problems everywhere.

Direct the Rider, show them where to go, how to act, what destination to pursue.

Relatively small changes had a big impact on a big problem. Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions.

Rider’s have a problem focus, when they need a solution focus.


Direct the Rider: Script the critical moves

Decision paralysis – more options, even good ones, can freeze us and make us retreat to the default plan. The more choices the Rider is offered, the more exhausted the Rider gets.

Change brings new choices that create uncertainity. Ambiguity is exhausting to the Rider- you may not know what options are available. Anxiety rises.

Big-picture, hands-off leadership isn’t likely to work in a change situation, because the hardest part of change- the paralyzing part- is precisely in the details.

Suggest a good place to start. Script the critical moves. Crystal-clear guidance.

You can’t script every move. It’s the critical moves that count. FOCUS on the critical.

Focus on what you can control- inputs. For instance, set some behavioral goals (ie: team will meet once a week and do…. Each salesperson will make 125 client calls each day.)


Direct the Rider: Point to the Destination

Destination postcard- a vivid picture from the near-term future that shows what could be possible. (inspirational, feeling) They show the Rider where you’re headed and they show the Elephant why the journey is worthwhile.

Need a gut-smacking goal!

When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle of the journey (it will be different anyway). Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving.


Motivate the Elephant: Find the Feeling

Find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.

Sequence of change is not ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but rather SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.

Do they need to understand (rider) or be enthused (elephant)? Failure to change usually isn’t an understanding problem; it’s a feeling problem.


Motivate the Elephant: Shrink the Change

Make people feel as though they’re already closer to the finish line than they might have thought (people hate being at the starting line). Remind people of what has already been accomplished.

Shrink the change, lower the bar.

Starting an unpleasant task is always worse than continuing. Get people to try something small and if they like they will continue. (tell kids: 5-minute room clean-up, they will most likely work longer)

Think of small wins (victory motivates us to keep going). Hope builds! Make the advances visible. Celebrate incremental victories. “How can we move from a 2 to a 3?” (not: “how can we move from 2 up to 10”) Next step in the right direction. Seek small improvement one day at a time.

Big changes come from a succession of small changes.


Motivate the Elephant: Grow Your People

Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure.

Show them that they should aspire to a different self image. People are receptive to developing new identities. He may become, in his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing.

Identities grow from small beginnings. Start with a baby step. It will increase the likelihood that they will go for bigger step later.

Any new quest, even one that is ultimately successful, is going to involve failure. Elephants hate to fail. Create the expectation of failure- not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.

People with a growth mindset- those who stretch themselves, take risks, accept feedback, and take the long-term view- can’t help but progress in their lives and careers.

Praise/compliment effort rather than skill- “You really worked hard on that” instead of “You’re so good at”

To create and sustain change, you’ve got to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper. You’ve got to embrace a growth mindset and instill it in your team.

We will struggle, we will fail, we will be knocked down- but throughout, we’ll get better, and we’ll succeed in the end.

Reframe failure as a natural part of the change process. Failure as learning.

The Elephant has to believe it’s capable of conquering the change (need confidence and you can do that by shrinking the change and/or growing your people)


Shape the Path: Tweak the Environment

If you want people to change, you can provide clear direction (rider) or boost their motivation and determination (elephant). Alternatively, you can simply make the journey easier.

Often what looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

Make the right behaviors a little bit easier and the wrong behaviors a little bit harder.


Shape the Path: Build Habits

Habits shifted when environment shifted.

Action triggers can have a profound power to motivate people to do the things they know they need to do. Preload the decision so that there is no cycle of conscious deliberation. (examples- call important client when you pour first cup of coffee each day. Go to gym after dropping off daughter at school.) Action triggers simply have to be specific enough and visible enough to interrupt people’s normal stream of consciousness. Action triggers create an instant habit. Habits are behavioral autopilot.

A good change leader never thinks, “Why are these people acting so badly? They must be bad people.” A change leader thinks, “How can I set up a situation that brings out the good in these people?”

Checklists simply make big screwups less likely.


Shape the Path: Rally the Herd

We try to fit in. Behavior is contagious.

Publicize the group norm.

Free-space: Small-scale meetings where reformers can gather and ready themselves for collective action without being observed by members of the dominant group. If you want to change the culture of your organization, you’ve got to get the reformers together. They need free space. They need time to coordinate outside the gaze of the resisters.

You’ve got to let your organization have an identity conflict. For a time, at least, you’ve got to permit an “us versus them” struggle to take place. It’s necessary.

Have members of your team rehearsed how they’ll react when they meet resistance from your organization’s “old guard”?

Every culture is shaped powerfully by its language.


Keep the Switch Going

Reward each tiny step toward the destination.
Reinforce positive behaviors.
Look for little rays of sunshine and celebrate.
Change isn’t an event; it’s a process.
To lead a process requires persistence.
Once the change started, it seemed to feed on itself. Snowballing
The more people are exposed to something, the more they like it.
Big changes can happen with very small steps.

As people begin to act differently, they’ll start to think of themselves differently, and as their identity evolves, it will reinforce the new way of doing things.

The people who change have clear direction (rider), ample motivation (elephant), and a supportive environment.

In our lives, we embrace lots of big changes- not only babies, but marriages and new homes and new technologies and new job duties.

Personal “supervised” behavior (making intentional choices, doing new things) is an exhaustible resource (we get tired, change is draining). Automatic behavior (non-change, routine) doesn’t sap our energy nearly as much. The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people. Change is hard because people wear themselves out. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

Once you break through to feeling, things change. Make audience feel the need for change.

Book review: Missional Renaissance (Part 3 of 3)

Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church by Reggie McNeal


Missional shift 3: From church-based to Kingdom-based leadership

• Bringing church into every domain of the culture
• Church as a catalyst to mobilize all the community
• Missional congregational pastors now pastor the community, not just the church
• Instead of being spiritual leaders in the kingdom of God, partnering with his mission in the world, we have created leaders to run the church.
• Kingdom leaders look for any way they can to gain entrance to people’s lives to “infect” them with God’s love for them, search for opportunities in the routines of people’s lives
• Congregations that are missional learn to celebrate this leadership choice by preparing people for their kingdom assignment and not tying them up with unnecessary club activities.
• Release people for ministry, empowering leaders to pursue their callings and passions
• God doesn’t need us to conduct his mission. We can’t pull off resurrection or life transformation. He has cut us in on the deal! Missional leaders discover what God is doing and then tell others about it.
• Many people in our culture will never be reached with the good news if we rely purely on the current church model for delivery.

Book review: Missional Renaissance (Part 2 of 3)

Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church by Reggie McNeal

Missional shift 2: From program development to people development

• Are people better off for being a part of this church, or are they just tireder and poorer?
• We must change our ideas of what it means to develop a disciple, shifting the emphasis from studying Jesus and all things spiritual in an environment protected from the world to following Jesus into the world to join him in his redemptive mission.
• Shifting church members’ commitments to people and causes beyond the church
• If we aren’t careful, we can even turn the first missional shift, the move from an internal to an external focus of ministry into a new program of community involvement.
• Loving God and loving our neighbors cannot be fulfilled at church. Being salt and light cannot be experienced in a faith huddle. Engaging the kingdom of darkness requires storming it, not habitually retreating into a refuge.
• People are no longer going to let the church or church leaders provide the template for their spiritual journeys. People will accept help in shaping their spiritual path. In fact, they welcome it, especially from people they respect and trust, who seem to have their best interest at heart. (willing to be coached)
• Interviews designed to explore their spiritual quests, questions about what they would like to see God do in their lives.
• People development culture: Are people growing in every aspect of their life? Are they becoming more like Jesus? Are they blessing the world as the people of God?
• People need help debriefing their lives, stimulate those discussions
• Growing through service- Jesus deployed his disciples long before they were “ready.” He knew that the fastest way to develop them was to engage them in real ministry encounters.
• People often grow more in intergenerational environments. That’s why God created families. (do family mission trips)
• One of the goals of spiritual formation is to help people see God at work in their lives.

Book review: Missional Renaissance (Part 1 of 3)

Reminder: I am not a professional book reviewer. These are simply my notes from this book. If I had to have only one book to lead me in ministry (other than the Bible), this would be it. You really need to get the book and read it to get all the benefits. It is loaded with examples and deals thoroughly with the whole "scorecard" thing which I really won't recap here. While a lot of books are being written these days on the missional church (and I have read many of them), Reggie McNeal spells it out in real "rubber-meets-the-road" fashion for the existing traditional, mainline church. These are the principles that have brought new life to Austell First UMC as its BLESS AUSTELL vision begins to be a real catalyst for community transformation.

Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church by Reggie McNeal

To think and to live missionally means seeing all life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world.

3 views of nature of the Church (George Hunsberger)
1. A place where certain things happen (i.e. worship, bible study, fellowship)
2. Vendor of religious goods and services
3. A body of people sent on a mission (the book champions this one)

The missional church believes it is God who is on mission and that we are to join him, partnering in his redemptive mission in the world.

• God is always at work in the world.
• Find out what God is doing and join him in it. (Henry Blackaby)
• Rather than being attractional, the missional church will be incarnational. (Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch)
• Carry on Jesus’ mission in the world
• Hoist our sails to catch the breeze that’s already blowing.
• Be the people of God in an unmistakable way in the world.
• Wherever missional followers of Jesus are, the church is there.

The Bible presents a call to action, not just a lesson to be studied.

The act of blessing people frequently leads them to inquire something along the lines of “Why are you doing this?” Response: “I am a follower of Jesus, and I am blessing you because that’s what he came to do.”


Missional shift 1: From an internal to an external ministry focus

• The missional church engages the community beyond its walls because it believes that is why the church exists.
• Missional churches look for ways to bless and to serve the communities where they are located. Much of their calendar space, financial resources, and organizational energy is spent on people who are not part of their organization. These measures may or may not improve the church’s bottom line in terms of traditional measures (attendance may actually go down if people are released to mission).
• Moving to external focus pushes the church from doing missions as some second-mile project into being on mission as a way of life.
• Shift from the church at the center to the kingdom of God at the center.
• As the church engages the world, it finds Jesus, whose home is in the streets or wherever he has to go to connect with the people he is pursuing, meaning everybody.
• A kingdom-oriented approach seeks to leverage the gospel into people’s lives right where they live, work, and play. The church is wherever followers of Jesus are. People don’t go to church; they are the church. They don’t bring people to church; they bring the church to people.
• The church is connector, linking people to the kingdom life that God has for them.
• The role of the church is simply this: to bless the world. In doing this, the people of God reveal God’s heart for the world.
• Genesis 12:1-2 God to Abraham: I will bless you so that you can be a blessing to everyone else.
• Instead of having an evangelism strategy, I urge congregations and people to develop a blessing strategy.
• Instead of asking someone, “Can I pray for you.” Ask: “How can I ask God to bless you?” Our God just loves to show up and show off!
• We have to believe that God has the ability to draw people to himself through these blessing encounters.
• Encourage folks to live out their faith in the spaces/places they already occupy.
• If we don’t find a way to be the church where they are, many people who will never come to church will never experience it.
• Worship- gather to share tales of God’s work in the world
• Incarnational believers are in competition with the kingdom of darkness that steals life from people.
• Adopt a school – the quickest way I know to become connected to the community beyond your church
• Live your life with the idea you are on a mission trip
• Intentional blessing agent of the kingdom of God
• Missional Jesus followers believe that the way they demonstrate love and service will intrigue people to pursue getting to know the God who inspires such service.
• Jesus followers adopt an intentional life of blessing people
• Any and every follower of Jesus, not just a select few, can demonstrate God’s love.
• Church is not a part of life for the missional follower of Jesus; it is the way of life.
• Blessing others is an act of worship.
• We can no longer think and act like club members; we must think and act like missionaries.
• Be about building a better community, not a better church. “No child will go hungry in this county” vision.