You must begin with clear truth

2 Timothy 05 TWO ESSENTIALS FOR LASTING CHANGE

2 Timothy 2:2
One thing I keep hearing from within and even without the church is that our communities, our nation and our world are in desperate need of change. We hear talk about transforming a community etc and most of the discussion is directed toward changing the groups. But you know that was never the strategy of the early church. The church never seemed to focus on transforming cultural systems. Instead, the major focus was on transforming the individuals. Change the person and you will change the culture. But how did they do it? Because they certainly did change the culture. It was always on a meta scale never on a mega scale. The work was done close at hand not from platforms or politic. Paul defines it in 2 Timothy 2:2. 2 Timothy 2:2 And the things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also

The things which you have heard from me Obviously, hes referring to the teaching he had given Timothy regarding the things of the lord. I have about five different clocks in my life to tell me the time. My watch, my phone, the motorcycle, the truck, and one in my office at church. Trouble is, they all say something different. One is two minutes fast, or on time, I dont know, one is either a couple minutes slow or on time, one is about three minutes off the other ones. One would think that the more clocks you have the better you would know the time. In my case, the conflicting accounts means Im never quite sure what time it really is. I dont know which clock to trust. In this generation, truth is like time and experts are like clocks. They all say very similar things, but they all seem to disagree on some points. As a result, nobody really knows the truth. When it comes to time, get a good baseline. They have an official clock that every other clock should be set by. World Clock. So the actual current time by the world clock is: Thats great for time, but where do we go for truth? We need someone we can trust. This is why God gave us the word of God. And this was the heart of what Paul was communicating with Timothy. Paul had spent a lifetime in study of the Old Testament as a young boy growing up. Then as a new disciple in his early 30s, (he was a member of the Sanhedrin and minimum age was 30) he had come to a saving knowledge of Christ. Paul had some early discussions with the Christians and he was

clearly aware of the teachings of Jesus. But God wanted him to put the pieces of the puzzle together and nobody was better equipped for the job than Paul. Paul was well known as a master theologian even before he became a Christian. Once when he was defending the faith before Porcius Festus, the Roman Prelate said, While Paul was saying this in his defense, Festus *said in a loud voice, Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad. Acts 26:24, NAS95. He was a brilliant mind. Shortly after his conversion, God took that brilliant mind to Saudi Arabia for a period of time, perhaps as long as three years, so that Paul could analyze the Law and the Prophets and through the Holy Spirits guidance, develop the first comprehensive cohesive understanding of who Jesus really was, and why he had come. Peter and the other disciples were great men of faith and they learned first hand from the feet of the master, but Paul had the gifts to bring it all together. We see Paul as an intellectual authority in the church, even over Peter and the others. On at least one occasion Paul actually confronted and rebuked Peter, and on other occasions Peter quoted Paul. and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 2 Peter 3:15, NAS95. So when Paul says, The things you have learned from me he means the full expression of truth as it is revealed in the Gospel. Paul was the New Testament equivalent of the world clock. If you want to know the time, set your watch on my mark.

This is being lost in many places. Today, every person reads the Bible and interprets it in his or her own way. They ask the question, What does the bible say to me? Thats wrong. The first question is, What does the Bible say? There is only one legitimate interpretation. The clear meaning of the original author. Once you get that, you can then move to APPLCATION. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO ME? When people hear all of these divergent and even conflicting messages they start to feel a bit like I do with five clocks that all say something different. I come away wondering what time is it really. They come away saying what is truth really? So it must begin with clear truth. Then you move to the next phase.

You must follow Gods strategy

these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also This is where so many go off the track. They have the truth. Defend it vigorously. But they dont know how to use the truth to make a difference. They are without a clear vision and strategy. We moved one of my beehives last weekend to a friends farm. He wanted two hives and I had three so I figured they would be happier there. Its hard to move a hive without losing some bees because they are well busy as bees. A typical honeybee can fly up to two miles one direction in its relentless search for nectar. So to move the bees you have to start early in the morning before they are active. I was up at dawn, filled the hole where they come and go and then duck taped the rag in, so that no more bees could escape. I knew some bees would be lost. Already a few dozen were hovering over the closed

hole confused that they couldnt land and unload their precious cargo. Nothing you can do. If you open the hole hundreds would fly out and they would be lost too. So we delivered the hive. Later that day I was moving by where the hive used to be and noticed a small ball of bees, about the size of a large orange, had reformed on the edge of the table where the hive sat. They were frantically trying to reorganize life. But without a queen they were without hope. You see the queen is everything to a hive. Lose the queen and the hive cannot continue. She lays the eggs for newborns. She controls the functions through her hormones. She is the heart and soul of the hive. Heres what I found fascinating. They still kept working. They still tried to form comb and collect honey. They tried to find a way to live as if they hadnt lost their queen. I thought of churches. Many are like those abandoned bees. They lost the queen. Not the pastor. Pastor isnt the queen. Theyve lost their original purpose. They forgot why they exist. Result. No strategy. Sad, because if we return to the bee analogy, the people all around us are like those queen less bees too. Theyve lost their purpose too and they dont really know what to do. So they hang on to what theyve known, even when it doesnt work anymore. So heres the situation. You have people without a purpose and you have churches that have forgotten their purpose and the result is the church has become irrelevant. The lost bees dont want a bunch of church bees telling them what to do, because the church bees seem just as lost.

At the core of the problem is the failed strategy of invitation versus the proven strategy of multiplication.
We have somehow come to think that the purpose of the church is to build a building and then fill it with people. So our job is to invite people to the building. Stay with me because I know you might be thinking, Ugh, bill we just spent all this money on buildings. Yes, they are necessary. But heres what I fear.

First, I fear that we will become more proud of the buildings than Jesus.
I read an article recently on a church that is constructing a 150 million dollar campus. The pastor was talking about the elaborate architecture and said, We wanted architecture that would point people to Jesus. Good grief. Buildings dont point people to Jesus, people point people to Jesus. You know who said very similar things? The medieval churchmen spent extravagant amounts on Cathedrals all over Europe. Those Cathedrals are empty today.

Second, I fear that we will think this is where ministry happens.

You have to come to 210 Finks Hideaway to find Jesus.

Finally, I fear how the buildings are likely to support the fallen idea that professionals do ministry
All of this reinforces a consumer mentality. The church member is the consumer or customer; the pastors are the shopkeepers.

I was talking recently to a young pastor that had been forced from his church. The criticism was that he wasnt preaching good enough. Then he wasnt visiting the hospitals enough. Then one suggested that he wasnt paying enough attention to the members. Members need more attention. Then the childrens ministry wasnt what it was supposed to do As I listened, I realized that the focus was on professional ministry. Our job is to show up. Your job is everything else. Where did we get that? All of this is the result of an invitation strategy. That was not the strategy of the New Testament. The New Testament insisted on a sending strategy and everyone was personally responsible for the work. Look carefully at the rest of 2 Timothy 2:2, These entrust to faithful men that will be able to teach others also. We see four generations represented. The things you have heard from ME. One. YOU. Two. Faithful men. THREE. OTHERS four. Strategy is sending, not inviting. Who is responsible in this model? All of us. Not just the pastor. This is the heart of the strategy. Every member is a minister. You have to own it. Want a clear understanding of the two different approaches? I saw it on the mission field. For ten years we poured resources into the camp in Ukraine. We funded the camp. We staffed the camps. Every summer we would send teams and other churches would send teams to teach the Ukrainian children. The Ukrainians themselves were relegated to translators or service personnel. We saw hundreds of children come to Jesus. But because they never owned the ministry, or felt

responsible for the success of the church work, they never took what they had learned and taught it to someone else. They were recipients only. The church never really formed and after the Americans left, the Ukrainian Christians would simply dissolve back into the culture. Contrast that to what I saw happen in Tanzania over the last couple of years. Two years ago Wade Akins invited David Mac and me to come to Tanzania and teach 40 pastors one book of the Bible. They came from all over the northern part of the country. Some on buses. Some on bicycles. Some walked. I taught Ephesians to those 41 pastors. It was intense. Question and answers. Every verse we broke down. 40 straight hours. Put that into perspective. The classwork in a typical college semester for 3 hours is 36 total hours. We crammed a semester of teaching on Ephesians into one week. They translated it into Swahili. Those forty pastors then took the material and each of them taught 40 men. Listen to what has happened since: We went in January 09. Trained 41. Those 41 became trainers. By the end of the year, 7228 were trained and they baptized in that one year, 1442 with 5520 waiting baptism. Since 2009 those pastors and all the people that they trained and those who were trained by the ones who were trained amounted to over 18000 baptisms. Thats what happens when we follow the sending strategy. Difference. Nobody was allowed to simply receive. They had to learn, and then they had to teach. Instead of addition, we saw multiplication. If we deploy the gospel in this way, we will stop talking about transforming communities as if you can do that. The community cant help but experience a transformation because so many in the community have been personally transformed.

This world doesnt know what time it is spiritually speaking. You know what time it is. Go tell them better yet, go tell one who can tell someone else who can tell someone else.