As many of you know, January 2013 at Good Shepherd will be all about Home: part sermon series, part Radical Impact Project, all leading to the concluding Sunday (January 27) where the entire Sunday offering will leave the church and buy a home for those precious, underage girls whose lives will be renovated through the outreach of On Eagles' Wings Ministries. 

You can read all about Home here and here. 

So: the primary benefit of this sermon series and Radical Impact Project is that young girls close to home will receive freedom from the bonds of sexual slavery.  I think it's about the best way that churches today can live into Jesus' self-described mission on planet earth:

[God] has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.  Luke 4:18

Yet as we plan and carry out this project around here, I notice a number of other benefits -- benefits that bring blessing to us as individuals and us as a congregation.  Here are five of them:

5.  It allows a large church to feel small.  As we spend the next couple of weeks sharing this vision of generosity and freedom in leader meetings and Life Group gatherings, the people of Good Shepherd are forging new relationships and re-kindling old ones.  It serves as yet another reminder that if you really want to get to know people, you've got to meet with them in their homes.

4.  It builds a generation of givers.  We will talk openly, honestly, and boldly about money during this series.  We'll take up the offering on January 27 in a much more overt way than our usual "drop your gift in the basket on the way out."  And one of our prayers is that by inviting (or imploring!) people to give to this cause, folks will experience the recurring joy of recognizing that all their money belongs to God in the first place and it is a privilege to return a portion to him.

3.  It allows us to speak to issues that make people squirm.  There is nothing pretty about human trafficking.  That term itself -- human trafficking -- is itself a gentle way of saying rape for profit.  That's what these girls are victims of -- sexual assault that lines the pockets of the worst the human race can conceive of.  But here's the truth: Christian men -- church-going men -- are part of the problem.  If men within the Body of Christ did not generate the demand, then there would not be such a sickening supply.

2.  It gives congregational identity.  In a lot of ways, Good Shepherd's identity and strength comes from these Radical Impact Projects, whether it's packing 192,000 meals as Sunday worship, returning 2,846 Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes, raising $207,000 for International Justice Mission, or Home.

1.  It gives the church momentum.  When an entire community of people rally around a single cause -- and that cause is beyond themselves -- an unstoppable kind of momentum surfaces.  This past Sunday, when we made the announcement of our goal and its scope, a woman approached me in the lobby and said, "This is why I love being part of this church."  Me too.

 

Yesterday we launched into Home, which is both a sermon series and a Radical Impact Project.  You can read more about it here.

And the first message came from the concluding words of Jesus' Sermon On The Mount:

²⁴ Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

Working backwards through that particular text, we landed together at the day's bottom line:  Too many homes have Jesus as decoration and not as foundation.

And to give people some concrete tools to help them build a home where Jesus is foundation, we handed out a Sermon On The Mount Reading Plan.  The Plan includes not only daily reading and questions for reflection, but also a daily children's activity. 

The idea is that entire households would read through this timeless sermon together and then engage in age-appropriate response to the words they have encountered.

Part of my sermon invited even those people who aren't sure where they stand with Jesus -- folks who may have been dragged to church by a friend or those who came simply because it was their New Year's Resolution -- to just try it.  For one week.  See if reading, embracing, and living the words of Jesus end up making a difference in how life works.

I'm eager to hear how the experiment works in the homes of Good Shepherd.

I'm also including the Reading Plan here for you as well. For you to . . . just try it.

(Thanks to Chris Thayer, Director of Discipleship, and Ryan Gordon, Director of Children's Ministries, for preparing what is below.)

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We're putting an enormous amount of effort into this next series at Good Shepherd -- a month-long effort called, simply, Home.

It's a multi-layered project, complete with meetings, prayers, meals, songs, devotions, a dedicated Facebook page with its own QR code, and a "big ask" at the end.

And, oh yeah, sermons.

All of which brought me face to face with a much larger question: how thin is the line between inspiration and manipulation?

We've all felt manipulated before.  Many times, we've felt that way at church.    Maudlin appeals, sentimental songs, overwrought testimonials.

Yet on the other hand, we've all been inspired through the right word at the right time, an artistic element that engages the mind and opens the heart, an opportunity to make our own lives count for something much larger than ourselves.

Perhaps the best distinction is this: manipulation is for the sake of the organization, while inspiration is for the sake of the kingdom.

So whether it's Home or future challenges we'll issue to the people of Good Shepherd, I pray I'll always stay on the right, kingdom-centered side of the line between inspiration and manipulation.

I've been thinking about the unique connections between preaching, salaries, and leadership recently.

In most workplace settings, employees clearly work for those who pay their salaries.

If you work in a large company, for example, you more than likely work for your manager . . . and that manager has a major role in deciding your income.

If you work for a family-owned business, the connection is even more direct.  You work for the owner -- or the owner's spouse, child, or cousin! -- and that owner then compensates you accordingly.

And in those cases, it's understood that salary setters lead while salary earners follow. 

For pastors, however, the situation is different.

We are called to lead the very people whose generosity makes our employment possible.

Now: I have been much blessed through the years with a good income.

And I've been even more blessed through the years that the people of Good Shepherd don't play the "but you've got to do what I want; I'm paying your salary!" card.

Yet I think this reflection on the vexing relationship between salary and leadership in ministry serves as a healthy reminder: we're in the customer service business. 

That's why we're to be prompt in returning calls and emails, attentive to the life seasons of people under our care, and aware that God's Spirit speaks just as well from the congregatoin to us as He does from us to the congregation.

So in the world of ministry, then, salary earners do in fact lead. And follow.