New Resource: Roman’s Preaching Guide

Hey Essential Church friends—

 

We’re really excited to share with you a resource we’ve developed.

 

Last fall our teaching team at New Life preached through the entire book of Romans. It was a thrilling and incredibly enriching experience that left both our congregation and our teaching team edified.

 

To guide us as a team on our journey, we created the Romans Preacher’s Guide; which we’re now making available to you on Amazon.

 

The guide includes:

  • A short historical and theological overview of the book of Romans
  • Big “preaching themes” to keep in mind
  • Reflections and suggested “preaching pathways” on each chapter
  • A short list of recommended resources

 

The Preacher’s Guide is available in electronic format for $6.99 or in paperback for $7.99. If you’re planning on or even considering preaching through the book of Romans (or even just working through it in an adult education or Sunday school class), go ahead and pick it up. We think it will be a big help to you.

 

And, of course, we’d love any feedback you can give. You can email aarndt@newlifechurch.org.

 

Grace to you,

 

Andrew Arndt

Associate Teaching Pastor

New Life Church

Episode 033: Drawing the Best Out of Your Team

For this conversation, we were joined by Ted Egly from the Center for Creative Leadership to talk about what leaders can do to get the best out of the teams and organizations they lead.

 

The research says that a high-performing team has three things: they celebrate wins early, they slow down in order to power up, and they are willing to change…

 

In my experience, the celebrations that are most powerful are the ones that affirm or encourage those who are actually moving the mission forward…

 

This really means that pastors have to be mindful of what is happening in their ministries… sometimes when the church gets to a certain size, ministry leaders lose a sense of what is going on…

 

We need to give ourselves white space [in our schedules] to slow down in order to be more intentional about what we’re doing…

 

Routines and rituals are all about being intentional about the script that you’re writing for your week, month, and year… you need to set them up so that you’re not just pulled by the emergency of the day…

 

I tell pastors all the time that if they’re preaching every Sunday, it’s a mistake… it’s hard to be creative that often… I use my weeks off to do exactly what we’re talking about: planning, leadership development, etc.…

 

We’re married to the mission, but we date the model… the model is going to change… sometimes we get stuck in a model that used to work…

 

The pain of staying the same has to be greater [for you] than the pain of changing… pastors need to make assess whether the pain that comes from change is worth it… a lot of times for pastors, the perceived pain is greater than the actual pain of the change… usually, it brings relief to the organization…

 

We can prepare people for the changes that are coming by having the conversation early with a core group of influencers and letting them speak into the process…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Assess yourself: which of Ted’s three elements of a high-performing team do you think you and your team are best at? Why did you give that answer?
  • Which of the three do you need the most improvement at? Why do you think that?
  • What is one thing you can begin to do this week or month that will help your team perform at a higher level?

Episode 032: Prayer, Unity, and the Kingdom. A Conversation with Pete Greig

In this conversation, we were joined by Pete Greig to talk about the role and purpose of prayer in the local church and how we can contend for unity and revival within the Church. We were so encouraged by the stories of bridge-building that are unfolding through the 24-7 prayer movement and we hope that it blesses you.

 

Every transformational movement of the church through history has begun with a movement of prayer…

 

We’re experiencing around the world an unprecedented coming together of the Body of Christ in our lifetimes… we’re facing profound challenges and we need each other and we’re long past thinking that one tradition, approach, or celebrity Christian leader is going to have all the answers…

 

It is in the present that Christians are worst at finding God… if prayer means anything at all, it means that we learn to encounter God in our present circumstance… and until we can find God in the present, we will never find him anywhere else…

 

I am praying for revival more than ever, but I am wary of revivalism… not only does revivalism keep Christians immature, but it is blasphemous insofar as it refuses to worship Jesus Christ as he is manifest in our present reality…

 

Prayer is not so much an activity of the church as it is the very heartbeat of the church… we don’t pray to get people saved, we get people saved so that they can pray…

 

I pray for the church in America with a great deal of gratitude but also pain… the blessing of America to the nations is beyond calculation… but the pain is that I see such division and I am deeply concerned…

 

The church’s prophetic voice must be based in the revelation that God is a reconciling God… and so when I see profound divisions around race and class and wealth and politics, it breaks my heart… my prayer for the church in America is for reconciliation…

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • What most stood out to you about Pete’s comments and why?
  • Is prayer the “heartbeat” of your church, or just one of the things that happens? How can you begin to change this?
  • What would it look like for you and your ministry to move towards greater reconciliation and unity within the Body of Christ in your area? How can prayer be a stimulus to that end?

 

RESOURCES

Pete’s books, including Red Moon Rising, God on Mute, and his most recent, Dirty Glory, are all available on Amazon.

Watch a short film about Pete’s Vision

Episode 031: Developing a Discipleship Culture

Before His ascension, Jesus gave a Great Commission: to go and make disciples. In this essential conversation, we talk about how discipleship happens and what it looks like for us to help people become disciples of Jesus. Join in as we discuss what the long journey of discipleship unfolds in the lives of the people around us.

 

To me, discipleship is becoming cruciform, becoming like the One who spread his arms out on a tree… you know you’re becoming a disciple when you’re learning to lay down your life in the journey to be like Jesus…

 

Discipleship happens painfully slowly, it happens over conversations and meals… that’s why you have to pace yourself… it’s a long obedience in the same direction… if you’re trying to get everything fixed in six weeks, you’re going to be disappointed…

 

One of the things we’ve gotten wrong in the American paradigm is that we’ve made this a solo project, discipleship becomes a do-it-yourself kind of thing… and it really just doesn’t happen that way…

 

If you pay attention to what Jesus was doing, he was always telling people to “come and follow me…” it has be relational… for all of us, we need to put ourselves in spots where we can do “come and follow me…”

 

I can’t call everyone into the depths of my life as a pastor, but one of the things I can do, maybe my principle task, is to create the right kinds of conditions where the Spirit can do what the Spirit characteristically does…

 

At some point, all of us as pastors have to think about how we’re multiplying our ministry… and not in the American business sense, but in the sense of investing in people who will become disciple-makers…

 

The corporate worship gatherings are absolutely part of discipleship… it’s never been easier to show up to church and hide… I want to lead my gatherings in a way that makes people bump into each other in ways that make discipleship possible…

 

Is the goal of discipleship for people to look like me, or to look like Jesus? We need to be able to distinguish between what is just personal preference and what is Jesus…

 

In the New Testament, what you see is the Apostles speaking to the whole people of God together… they assume that the living Christ himself is discipling all of them, together, through all the instantiations of the church’s life…

 

QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM

  • Think for a minute: how do you and your team describe the “bullseye” of discipleship?
  • What kinds of “seedbeds” or environments have you created to help people grow into the stature of Christ? Are they sufficient to the task? Why or why not?
  • How much of your ministry is devoted to making disciples who will make disciples? What can you do to grow in this?