Tag Archives: Church Leaders

Programs Won’t Change a Life

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This is a great article by Michael Warden on “Why Programs Don’t Produce Lasting Change.”

Warden writes:

“If I…do not have love, I gain nothing.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:3

The leadership culture of the Church in the West is enamored with programs. We love to package the things we’ve learned ~ be they strategies, techniques, processes, or curricula ~ and scale them to multiply our impact and to help more people.

The motive is noble. And if we were merely in the knowledge-sharing business, then creating a program or curriculum to increase our impact would make perfect sense.

But we’re not in the knowledge business. At least, not primarily.

We’re in the transformation business.
We’re in the business of changing lives.

In this business of transforming lives, things like strategies, techniques, processes, curricula ~ they all have their place. For anyone experiencing authentic life transformation, there are definitely skills that need to be learned, new ways of being and doing that better serve the new person they have now become.

But programs don’t change people. They don’t produce that transformation. They can’t. They can’t because they lack the one and only thing in the universe that can authentically transform a person into who they were meant to be.

Love.

Yes. Love.

See, here is the secret to inspiring deep, authentic, personal transformation in another human soul:

It does not come through giving them knowledge or skill sets or even training them in disciplined practices (though these things are all very good). It comes through love and the courage born of love.

Love is the transforming agent of the universe. Love is the “Deeper Magic” that C.S. Lewis pointed to in The Chronicles of Narnia, the magic that changes not merely behavior, but the core identity of a man or woman (Romans 5: 6-10; 2 Corinthians 5:17-19). With enough love brought to bear, anything is possible.

But without love unleashed, without love applied, nothing really changes. Not really. Not in the deep places where our most honest thoughts lie.

The work of transformation, of changing lives, is life-on-life. Heart on heart. It always has been. There’s no getting around it. It’s slower than we’d like it to be. AND it’s the way God designed His Kingdom to advance.

So it all works out like this: A brilliant curriculum or a masterful strategy placed in the hands of a leader who does not know how to love will produce little change and may even do harm. But in the hands of a soul who is willing to love and loves well, even the [worst] curriculum can’t prevent true life change from spreading through them.

Many leaders I know (including me) have spent so much time developing programs and discussing strategies and so little time investing in hearts so they become great lovers of others…life, on life, on life.

Chuck Colson Remembered

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Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most eloquent and influential voices this past weekend with the death of Charles W. “Chuck” Colson. The Prison Fellowship and Colson Center for Christian Worldview founder died at 3:12 p.m. ET Saturday, April 21 at the age of 80. After a brief illness, Colson passed away at a Northern Virginia hospital with his wife, Patty, and family at his bedside.
On March 30, Colson became ill while speaking at a Colson Center for Christian Worldview conference in Lansdowne. The following morning he had surgery to remove a pool of clotted blood on the surface of his brain, and doctors determined he had suffered an intracerebral hemorrhage. Though Colson remained in intensive care, doctors and family were optimistic for a recovery as he showed some signs of improvement. However, Tuesday (April 17) Colson became gravely ill when further complications developed.

A Watergate figure who emerged from the country’s worst political scandal, a vocal Christian leader and a champion for prison ministry, Colson spent the last years of his life in the dual role of leading Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, and the Colson Center, a research and training center focused on Christian worldview teaching.

Colson has been a central figure in the evangelical Christian community since he shocked the Washington establishment in 1973 by revealing his new Christian commitment in the midst of the Watergate inquiry. In later years Colson would say that because he was known primarily as Nixon’s “Hatchet Man,” the declaration that ” ‘I’ve been born again and given my life to Jesus Christ’ kept the political cartoonists of America clothed and fed for a solid month.” It also gave new visibility to the emerging movement of “born-again” Christians.

The following statement has been issued by the Colson family:
“Patty Colson and the entire Colson family would like to thank the many people around the world who lifted up Chuck and us in prayer. We so appreciate the love and encouragement.”

This article is from Churchleaders.com

Seven Reasons You May Never Accomplish Something Significant

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As we begin 2012, Perry Noble gives us “7 Reasons You May Never Accomplish Something Significant.”

1. Procrastination! (Remember, procrastination is assassination on the amazing future God has for you – James 1:22!)

2. You are allowing your past to identify you rather than Christ to identify you! (See I Corinthians 6:9-11!) You are not who you were…you are who you are in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17), and if you don’t let your past die, then it won’t let you live.

3. You are more obsessed with what others think about you rather than what Christ thinks about you! (See Colossians 3:2-3, Galatians 1:10)

4. You do not understand the fact that God’s Holy Spirit lives inside of you (Ephesians 1:13-14) and has gifted you and is calling you to do something greater than you could ever imagine (Ephesians 2:10, Ephesians 3:20)

5. You are afraid (see Isaiah 41:10) – and remember, anyone who ever accomplished anything significant for Christ had to take a significant step of faith (Hebrews 11:6!)

6. You believe the lie from hell that says you are an accident when Scripture says that God custom designed you (Psalm 139:13-16) and that you were clearly created on purpose, with a purpose and for a purpose.

7. You are obsessed with things that have ZERO significance when it comes to eternity (I John 2:17).

You can find this article and others like it at churchleaders.com.