In early 2000, our leadership team began asking the question: What does a healthy follower of Christ look like? If we are to be successful in fulfilling Christ’s commission to make disciples, we need to define the term “disciple.” Through a series of meetings, we determined that a healthy follower of Christ is someone who is balancing the five biblical purposes in his or her life and heart.
A healthy follower of Christ is:
- Surrendering his or her heart and life to Christ on an ongoing basis.
- Experiencing fellowship with other Christians.
- Growing in Christ through “being” and “action.”
- Discovering and using his or her God-given gifts and abilities.
- Reaching out and sharing the love of Christ with nonbelievers.
Unless you know what the target is, you cannot hit it. For us, the target became health through balance. As we begin to reflect Christ and become more like him, the focus of our lives will shift away from self-centeredness and toward serving him through every area of our life. That is health and balance.
So if we as a church were trying to produce healthy followers of Christ, our leadership team had to decide what the best tool or delivery system is to produce that desired result….
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A relationship full of love and passion will go on forever. Right? Reality shows tell us that statement just might not be true. Passion can fade very quickly. Every successful relationship works at keeping that passion alive. The same is true in ministry. In the 14 years that I have been at Saddleback Church and the 29 total years I have been in full time ministry, I have learned passion is the common trait that keeps you pressing on through the hard times and sparking your imagination to dream about risking for God in the good times. Passion can’t be faked; it must be born out of the soul. So where is your passion? What keeps you in the game? Apply these ten and stay in the ministry game!
Before I share four current learnings we have had here at Saddleback Church in the last couple of years on connecting people, let me give you a bit of background. In the book Small Groups With Purpose (SGWP), I explain probably our two most effective strategies for connecting people at Saddleback Church over the last 15 years. Since 1997 we have taken our connection percentage from 30% to 120%. Yup, we have more people in small groups than attend the weekend service!
When was the last time you made an appointment with your doctor for a physical examination? Have you avoided it because you thought he might tell you something you wouldn’t want to hear, something like, “You could stand to lose a few pounds,” or maybe, “A little exercise would do you some good,” or “Your cholesterol is looking a bit high, time to cut out the bowl of ice cream before bedtime”?
