 Dear pastors, missionaries, chaplains and friends, Steve here… I was sitting in the Moncton International Airport, NB waiting for my flight home while talking to my wife on the phone when to my surprise, Dr. Ed Stetzer walked past me to get on the same flight. I blundered out something like, “Yo, Bro!”, and he turned around with “Yo, Yo, Yo!” I apologized to my wife, and said good-bye to her. Ed had been our key-note speaker at our recent Fellowship National Conference and was a blessing to our delegates. We sat down and talked about the Fellowship and evangelism in Canada. Ed had just visited our French seminary SEMBEQ, earlier that week in Montreal. Ed is a numbers guy. so we also talked statistics. He’s doing a major survey/study on faith trends and the Church in Canada, which he plans to present at the “Momentum” Church Planting Conference on October 27-29, 2015 in Montreal. I had just listened — a month earlier — to Dr. Reg Bibby at the North American Baptist Fellowship Conference. Reg has studied faith and Church trends in Canada for close to 40 years. He’s Canada’s resident-expert on the subject. In 1993, Bibby wrote a book full of stats and projections that spelled out the dreary decline of Canadian churches by 2015.  In April of 2015, he concluded a sizeable survey to discover if his predictions of 20 years ago came true. You can read the results in an April “McClean’s” magazine entitled “Jesus Saves: Seriously”. Briefly, Bibby discovered the evangelical church is doing okay. It’s even growing; mostly due to immigration. The Roman Catholic Church has remained the same at about 40% of Canada’s population. However, mainline Protestantism is in free fall. The mainline Protestant Church significantly lowers the stats and leading to the media claims that Christianity is on the way out. That is a lie. The stats prove otherwise. Math, numbers – do not lie. In fact, Bibby showed a chart for Canadian evangelical affiliation since 1871. For 130 years, evangelicals have represented approximately 8% of Canadians. However, in recent years, it has increased to 11%. Bibby is not sure why. He’s studying the reasons for this as we speak. So you can sense my surprise when I heard Ed Stetzer say that no serious researcher in the US would say that evangelical Christianity is dying. Because it is not. Since my chat with Ed, I read a May 12 2015 blog that Stetzer wrote entitled “Nominals to Nones: 3 Key Takeaways from Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey” (click > HERE < to read).  Pew is the respected religious trend research group. Analysis of their recent major study is that the nominal are becoming the nones (no religious preference), and the convictional are remaining committed. As Stetzer writes: “Americans whose Christianity was nominal – in name only – are casting aside the name. They are now aligning publically with what they’ve actually not believed all along”. Committed evangelical Christians in the States, like in Canada, have remained rather steady. In fact, between 2001 and 2014, evangelicals in the States rose from 59.8 million to 62.2 million. Evangelicals now make up a clear majority (55%) of American Protestants. This is up from 44% in 2007. Millennials stayed the same at 21% over the same seven years. Every generation remained the same except the Greatest Generation. The reason why there appears to be a decline in Christianity in the USA is that nominal protestants are now checking off “none” or “no” religious preference. As in Canada, mainline churches are in free fall. Math does not lie. So it’s not all doom and gloom out there, although evangelicalism is still losing ground on the percentage of population, and it’s still tough to reach Canadians for Christ – no doubt! But the stats are not as bad as you may have thought or believed. The reality is the Church in North America is becoming more evangelical by percentage. Christianity is less nominal as the mainline churches decline. The Church is becoming more defined or refined as it steps away more and more from the culture. None of this means there is no apathy or nationalism in the evangelical church. There is. We all see it. And removing ourselves from the culture creates a problem, but the promise remains that the church will prevail! One last tidbit: · In Canada, Baptists make up 2% of the population, and are the seventh largest religious group · In the USA, Baptists make up 17% of the population and are the third largest religious group Just because I thought you wanted to know J. Have a blessed week, Steve Jones  Click on banner above to register for this Conference!
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 Steve Jones here… Every church has got at least one. Pastors, missionaries, and church leaders get beat up by them. They wreak havoc, cause division, distract churches from mission and cause pastors to resign prematurely. Who am I describing? The “church bully”. Dr. Thom Rainer, our speaker for our upcoming Fellowship National Conference in Gatineau, QC from November 9-11, 2015, recently wrote of the:  NINE TRAITS OF CHURCH BULLIES Church bullies typically must have an enemy to feed their insatiable appetite to fight. They are unhappy unless fighting some battle “for the Lord”. Often we find these people in places of influence in the church. Hopefully by investigating the traits of a “Church Bully”, we can recognize them before they cause dissension and damage: 1. They do not recognize themselves as bullies. To the contrary, they see themselves as necessary heroes sent to save the church from her own self. 2. They have personal and self-serving agendas. They have determined what “their” church should look like. Any person or ministry or program that is contrary to their perceived ideal church must be eliminated. 3. They seek to form power alliances with weak members in the church. They will pester and convince groups, committees and persons to be their allies in their cause. Weaker church staff members and church members will succumb to their forceful personalities.  4. They tend to have intense and emotional personalities. These bullies use the intensity of their personalities to get their way.
5. They are famous for saying “people are saying”. They love to gather tidbits of information and shape it to their own agendas. 6. They find their greatest opportunities in low expectation churches. Many of the church members have an entitlement view of church membership. They seek to get their own needs and preferences fulfilled. They therefore, won’t trouble themselves to confront and deal with church bullies. That leads to the next issue, which is a consequence of this point. 7. They are allowed to bully because church members will not stand up to them. I have spoken with pastors and church staff who have been attacked by church bullies. While the bully brings them great pain, they have even greater hurt because most of the church members stood silent and let it happen. 8. They create chaos and wreak havoc. A church bully always has his next mission. While he or she may take a brief break from one bullying mission to the next, they are not content unless they are exerting the full force of their manipulative behaviour. 9. They often move to other churches after they have done their damage. Whether they are forced out or simply get bored, they will move to other churches with the same bullying mission. Some bullies have wreaked havoc in three or more churches. NINE WAYS to DEAL with the CHURCH BULLY Thom Rainer moves from the descriptive to the prescriptive in these following suggestions. What can you do to prevent or stop bullies in YOUR church? : 1. Fight bullying with the power of prayer. The most common targets of church bullies are the pastor and church staff. I encourage everyone in vocational ministry to ask humbly for people to pray for them daily. In two of the churches where I served as pastor, I had as many as 100 or more people committed to pray for me daily. They typically prayed for me for only two or three minutes each day at noon. Their intercessory prayers for me were brief, but they were powerful! 2. Seek to have an Acts 6 group in the church. I am specifically referring to the manner in which the Jerusalem church dealt with murmuring and complaining. They appointed a group to take care of the widows who were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. The seven who were appointed to the task were thus not only to do that ministry, but they were also to preserve the unity of the church. Churches need either informal or formal groups that see their ministry as dealing with conflict, complaints and dissension so that unity is preserved. 3. Have a high expectation church. Higher expectation churches tend to be more unified, more Great Commission-focused, more biblically defined and more servant-oriented. Stated simply, high expectation churches don’t offer an environment conducive to bullying. 4. Encourage members to speak and stand up to church bullies. Bullying thrives in a church where the majority remains in silent fear of church bullies. Bullies tend to back down when confronted by strong people in the church. We just need more strong people in the church. 5. Make certain the polity of the church does not become a useful instrument to church bullies. Many churches have ambiguous structures and lines of accountability. Polity is weak and ill-defined. Bullies take advantage of the ambiguity and interpret things according to their nefarious needs. 6. Be willing to exercise church discipline. Church discipline is a forgotten essential of many churches. Bullies need to know there are consequences for their actions, and church discipline may be one of them. 7. Have a healthy process to put the best-qualified persons in positions of leadership in the church. Bullies often are able to push around less qualified people who have found themselves in positions of leadership. There should be a spiritually and strategically designed process to choose and recruit people for key leadership positions. 8. Have a healthy process to hire church staff. For example, an egregious mistake would be the church’s hiring of a senior staff member without the enthusiastic support of the pastor. If the pastor and new staff member do not have good chemistry, a church bully can quickly pit one against the other. A unified church staff is a major roadblock for a church bully. 9. Encourage a celebratory environment in the church. Joyous churches deter bullies. They like somber and divided churches. Bullies need to be confronted so their “end-runs” won’t harm church leaders in our churches. I trust Dr. Thom Rainer’s counsel is a support to someone out there today. Remember, Dr. Rainer will be the speaker at our next Fellowship National Conference in Gatineau, Quebec – just across the river from our Nation’s capital, Ottawa. Hope to see you there! Have a blessed week, Steve Jones  Dear pastors, missionaries, chaplains and friends, Steve Jones here… Ask my kids what dad’s favourite book is and in a split second they’ll say in union “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. I’ve read the book a bunch of times. Got the movie, even the special anniversary edition DVD set. My kids bought me tickets to see the play at the Stratford Festival Theatre as a Father’s Day present. Got the t-shirt and ball cap with the words “To Kill a Mockingbird” plastered across it. I named my dog “Scout” after the female protagonist in the book. But my family put their collective foot down when I wanted to name our second dog, “Jem”. Sophie, you have Jessica to thank for your beautiful name.  There is just something about the story that grabs me by the throat and throttles me. Emotions deep within well up every time I see the movie. One of my favorite scenes involves Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, who is a lawyer. He leaves the court room all alone after fighting for the life of an innocent black man who was falsely accused of raping a white woman in the Deep South of Alabama in the 1930s. The entire court has been dispersed. Standing alone, Atticus collects his papers, turns and stoically carrying the burden of the day, he departs. He doesn’t notice that in the “Coloured” section in the upper balcony of the Courthouse, the entire black community stands waiting to honour him as he leaves. One black lady, standing with her peers is caring for Atticus’ young daughter, Scout. She whispers to her, “Stand up, Scout. Your father is passing.” Gets to me every time, without fail!  When I grow up, I want to be just like Atticus Finch. In my opinion, he is definitely one of the greatest fictionalized heroes ever created. Harper Lee chose to never write another novel after “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Wow! I can only imagine the other tales with which she could have gifted us. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that Lee’s only known earlier work was recently discovered and being published July 14, 2015. Guess what’s on my summer reading list?  Harper Lee wrote, “Go Set a Watchman” in the mid-1950s, using the same backdrop and characters of her Pulitzer Prize winning “To Kill a Mockingbird”. It’s set 20 years after the tale told in Mockingbird, in the same town adjusting to the turbulent times transforming mid-1950s America. A publisher looked at “Go Set a Watchman” and thought a story about her town and characters 20 years earlier might be more interesting. So she wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” and everyone thought her first book was lost – until late 2014 when a copy was discovered! I’m looking forward to a good read. I’m hoping Atticus will remain the man who stands above the fray and speaks the truth even when no one else is listening. Something to think about… Have a blessed week, Steve Jones Our 2015 Fellowship theme verse is: “"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10 (NLT)   Dear pastors, missionaries, chaplains and friends, Steve Jones here… It’s summer. The days are longer, sunny, and warm. My backyard hammock is calling out my name to spend quality time together. Please take some time this summer to get some rest and refreshment. One motto I have always remembered was Rick Warren’s advice to “Divert daily, withdraw weekly, abandon annually”. Why do we get overloaded? Why do we allow our bodies, emotions, schedules, budgets to all get overloaded? The simple answer is that we’re trying to do too much. We get to choose everyday whether we want balance or burn-out.  The Psalmist tells us: · “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be…” Psalm 39:4 (NLT) · “Teach us to make the most of our time…” Psalm 90:12 (NLT) We do a quick read and miss the point. We think we have so little time and so much to get done and we become overwhelmed. The lesson David is praying is to learn to FOCUS on the most important things and use our time wisely. The following are five things to F.O.C.U.S. on if we’re ever going to maintain balance. How/what to focus on:  1. Focus on Love: · 1 Cor. 14:1 (NLT) says it: “Let love be your greatest goal.” · 1 Cor. 13:3 (NLT) says it: “No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.” Everything else is secondary. God doesn’t say my relationships are an important part of my life. God says your loving-relationships are your life. Love is what life is all about. So why do relationships get the short end of the stick in your life? When we get overloaded with tasks and “to do lists” and achievement — when we get overloaded, relationships tend to get ignored. Insight #1: Spend more time than you normally do with family and friends this summer. 2. Organize my time: How do you spell love? I spell it “TIME”. · 1 John 3:18 (GN) says it: “We must show love through actions that are sincere, not through empty words. If you say you love but you’re not showing any time, you’re just kidding yourself.” “Time” is my focused attention given to someone I care about. It is a wonderful gift that we get to give daily… or not. You can always get more money, but you can’t get more time. It’s a finite commodity that needs to be stewarded well. When we give someone our time, we’re giving something that we’ll never get back… it’s precious. Insight #2: The best use of your life is LOVE and the best expression of your love is giving away your TIME.  3. Contribute to others: How do you use your TIME? For you, or others? · Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) says it: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.” We were created by God to help and support each other. Serving others is the whole point of life. Our lives are out of balance when we consistently serve self… burn-out is inevitable. When we’re so busy with no margin in life, we miss out on those moments to help others. We quickly drive past the car with a flat tire because we’re on our way to a scheduled meeting. Insight #3: Stop and help a neighbour or stranger in need this summer… do it at least once a month and see what happens. 4. Understand why we overwork:  Why do you do what you do? Because you’re an honest hard-working person? Or something else?
Often there is something underneath that causes us to work out of balance. Maybe it’s fear, or to secure and control your future. Maybe it’s to earn someone’s love or approval, or both? So people will accept me, include me, like me, love me. Maybe you enjoy the comforts and pleasures of life and you work harder to accommodate our consumer lifestyle. James actually has something to say about that in James 4:1-3. If our net-worth goes up, then our self-worth will also increase. My work never increases my worth. If we don’t understand this one and finally settle it… we will continue to overwork to satisfy something that hard work can never satisfy. Insight #4: Get on that hammock often and read a book this summer. Better yet, share your hammock and cuddle your spouse, child, grandchild, or dog, “Rover”. 5. Show your love: If the greatest use of your life is to love and the greatest expression of your love is time… Insight #5: Then the greatest time to love is NOW! “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it’s in your power to help them. If you can help your neighbour NOW, don’t say “Come back tomorrow, and then I’ll help you’.” Proverbs 3:27-28 (NLT) Why NOW? Because stuff happens. Circumstances change. Children grow up. People die. Tomorrow gives no guarantee. Shoe your love… NOW! Five things to F.O.C.U.S. on if we’re ever going to maintain balance; let’s start together this summer… I’m preaching to myself! Have a blessed week, Steve Jones Our 2015 Fellowship theme verse is: “"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10 (NLT) |