Judas, one of the 12 apostles chosen by Jesus, a very active and engaging disciple, smart and intelligent (made him on the treasury position), resourceful and ambitious… what went wrong?

 The love of self.

Idolatry of money and the material things of this world lured him to do a very foolish decision. He was always with Jesus, he saw the power, love and grace of God, being displayed in the person of Jesus. Miracles everyday. The sick being healed, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the leper, the paralytic, the evil-possessed restored, and the dead put back to life. But it didn’t catch Judas attention on who Jesus really is. He just loved himself too much to give a chance to figure out how powerful Jesus is. Judas didn’t even feel the fear of God when Jesus read the minds of the pharisees and all his enemies! How insensitive!

Judas’ mind was so preoccupied by the things of the world and what he desires to achieve. He didn’t even notice the effort Jesus has made just to teach them. I’m sure Judas didn’t even had the thought of asking his colleagues any counseling on what to do with the temptation he’s going through. For me, Judas, didn’t care of the calling he received, no intention of receiving the promises of God spoken through Jesus Christ, it was just all about him, all about Judas.

I realized not only that it’s possible to experience a Judas life in our time but a possibility of a stronger magnitude. Why? Judas walked with Jesus, we didn’t. Just imagine how little faith and fear of God we could be into without personally seeing Jesus walk down the city streets. The apostle Paul warned every believer…

Hebrews 2:1 We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

 1 Corinthians 10:12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!

Being active in church is not enough that we consider ourselves strong in the faith. It is withstanding the test of temptation. As Chinkee Tan in his message, “it is not how much bible you read but how much bible you apply.”

Let’s check our walk in faith, is it all about Jesus? or is it all about us?

Written by Jun Gomez

They say if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Well almost a correct statement but missing a very important piece.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes:

We are all expert planners, are we not? Those people [the builders of Babel’s Tower] were planners. They drew the specifications of the city. They had it all worked out. We all do that in life, do we not? You have your plans. Your future life and career are mapped out. You know what you want to do. Where does God come in? Is the plan made under God, or is it made apart from him? The one lesson of [Genesis 11] is that if you plan your life without God at the center, it will come to nothing, nothing at all. It will be as futile and as fatuous as the Tower of Babel. God will come down and will destroy it, whether you like that or not. This is the whole history of the Bible. It is the history of the subsequent centuries after the end of the Bible. It is the history of the twentieth century. The human race is not allowed to build a civilization without God, and you are not allowed to build your life without God.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Gospel in Genesis: From Fig Leaves to Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 141.

It’s 1:20am and I’ve been thinking about hunger. No, I am not hungry but the thought that every church planter, pastor, missionary, church worker, youth pastor must be hungry. It would be so sad to have demotivated and apathetic Christ followers.

I’ve been reading up on some secular magazines like Fast Company, INC and Success and read how many of the world are hungry for their cause – whether it’s fighting for health, internet marketing, personal branding, million dollar business ideas and sometimes try to compare it to the hunger I have when it comes to advancing God’s kingdom.

Not that I’m saying God’s love is equivalent to how passionate and hungry I am for the ministry. I hope you get what I mean. If the world would dedicate their heart and soul for a cause that has shorter life span and value, how much hungry should we be when we know that the message of the gospel is the solution to man’s ultimate problem.

It can’t be church as usual for us. Discipleship is never a time in time out thing. It is our lifeblood. The gospel so transforms me that I am forever hungry to work and spread the message.

I remember when I was still in high school. Pastor Ferdie Cabiling, our senior pastor in Victory Ortigas, then was still a youth pastor, would visit us on a regular basis and share the word of God passionately. Whether he was speaking to us as a small group or preaching to thousands – the fire was there. One time our siblings had an interesting discussion. The topic was ” Do you think Pastor Ferdie is always on Fire?”

On my first three years of ministry, I work alongside Pastor Ferdie and I got my answer. HE IS ALWAYS ON FIRE. Why? Because the message of the gospel has consumed him and there is no other option but spread the message through discipleship and hard work. He taught us never to back down from any challenges. He taught us the value of hard work especially in ministry. He taught us that you don’t  focus on you but  you look at the big picture. Be a team player. No lame excuse was big enough to back down from doing God’s work. The youth pastors at that time would label working under Pastor Ferdie as BOOT CAMP for want to be pastors. For that I want to honor and thank him.

If you are a minister of the gospel – step up to the plate and show how hungry you are – not to prove anything because you have nothing to prove but because Christ is worth being hungry about.

Had the rare chance to be in the same elevator with Pastor Peter Tan Chi, senior pastor of CCF ( Christ’s Commission Fellowship), one of the biggest church in the Philippines and a neighboring church of Victory Ortigas and the church where I pastor, Victory Greenhills.

During our short conversation in the elevator, Pastor Peter Tan-chi asked how the church in Greenhills was doing and how I am doing. He then asked me a question that I’d never really thought of: He said, “ What are the challenges you are facing as a pastor?”

Since it was a short elevator ride, I was able to answer only what was on top of my head.

1. The challenge to be a senior pastor.

When I was a youth pastor all I did was think about the students but since taking the role of a senior pastor I cannot just box myself in thinking only of one ministry. A senior pastor has to think of how to run the church, budget financially, encourage his team, pastor his church, disciple the next generation of leaders. You then have to prepare a message, attend meetings, and do some pastoral care duties. Sometimes you wonder what you got yourself into. Not that I’m complaining but it is a fulltime job.

2. Another challenge that a pastor has to face is transferees.

I have nothing against transferees but every church transferee brings with him certain culture and practices he/she got used to in his previous church that he/she wants to carry on to the new church. I myself am a transferee. Victory adopted me as its own but I had to go through years of learning and unlearning some of the things and practices I got used to when I was in my former church.

Here is where leadership is challenged. A senior pastor needs to be firm in what culture he wants the church to embrace. Leaders create culture. If you fail to create the culture in your church, then other people will create that culture for you.

Most of my early challenges dealt with people from other churches who wanted to do things their way but now in the church I am pastoring. There were certain culture and values that I had to guard and that meant talking to some people who wants to lead our church to be discipled. It doesn’t matter if you are a deacon of a church or a former pastor in another church, we introduce and let them go through our discipleship process.

Our pastoral team calls it “INJECTING THE VICTORY DNA”. It does not mean we take pride in our culture but we believe we are called to reach the next generation through discipleship and we value relationships and our main motive is to HONOR GOD and MAKE DISCIPLES.

Some churches have other values and we do believe God called them to be such. Some churches are called to be worship-oriented. Some churches are called to start prison ministries. Some churches are great in having a choir ministry. Some churches are geared toward reaching people in the ARTS. All are good. No church is greater than the other. The central mission of the church is to spread the gospel and God will use churches of different make up to reach that goal.

Now I wasn’t able to say all these things during the 1 minute conversation I had with Pastor Peter Tan-Chi but I believe these are some challenges that a church planter and a pastor might face as they pastor their churches. Also if I was given a minute more, I would ask Pastor Peter the same question….. sayang!!!

Related Posts:

1. Creating the Church Culture

2. What is the IT?

3. Rule #1 to break

Your effectiveness in ministry depends directly on your dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit. The promise of the gospel is that when we bow our knee to Christ as Savior and Lord, we are united with him, brought near to him for eternity (Ephesians 2:13). That is objectively true for us. However, there is a subjective experience of our union with Christ whereby we appropriate our union with him. This is dependence.

Vital help comes from a vital connection to Christ

Most of the young men I’ve encountered who aspire to serve God in vocational ministry gravitate toward the pragmatics of ministry performance: preaching improvement, church growth, cultural engagement, etc. While it is good and necessary to pursue excellence in these areas, the paradox of Christian ministry is that our “peak performance” in leading, shepherding, and preaching comes fundamentally from a rich spiritual life, not from ministry skills.

True spiritual fruit in becoming a better preacher, leader, shepherd, and cultural exegete depends entirely on the health and vitality of a pastor’s spiritual life. Only when we are vitally connected to Christ can we be vitally helpful to others.

Charles Spurgeon said it best: “The labour of the Christian ministry is well performed in exact proportion to the vigour of our renewed nature” (Lectures to my Students).

Go back a few centuries

Much of the writing on contemporary spirituality is shallow and focused on behavior modification (though, of course, you can find exceptions). To learn dependence on God and experience personal inner renewal, we must go back a few centuries. Much of the devotional literature of previous eras of church history was not as enamored with “success,” not as engulfed by entertainment, and not as driven by ministry output. Instead, it mainly focused on a vital spiritual inner life.

John Wesley, who made it his regular custom to spend two hours per day in prayer, wrote, “God does nothing except in response to believing prayer.”

Martin Luther famously said, “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” According to Luther, being busy is all the more reason to spend much time wrestling with God in prayer.

Richard Baxter, the Puritan pastor and theologian, counseled those seeking to serve in pastoral ministry with these words: “When your minds are in a holy, heavenly frame, your people are likely to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers, and praises, and doctrine will be sweet and heavenly to them. They will most likely feel when you have been much with God: that which is most on your hearts, is like to be most in their ears.” God’s people know when we are close to God—and when we are not. We are a model for them to be dependent on God.

Let us, “…set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12) by depending on the Holy Spirit.

This post is adapted from Darrin Patrick’s book Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission, available now. It is currently on sale for kindle and Ipad users

How do you keep the church’s passion for ministry from deflating?

Vision doesn’t stick; it doesn’t have natural adhesive. Instead, vision leaks.
You’ve repeated the vision for your church a hundred times. Then someone will
ask a question that makes you think, What happened? Didn’t they hear what
we’ve said over and over? Don’t they know what this church is all about?

You can spot leakage by listening for three things:

1. Prayer requests.

What people pray for will tell you more than anything else whether they are locked into the vision and priorities of the church. When you are in a leadership meeting, are the only prayer requests for sick people? When I’m in such a meeting, I say, “Whoa, is anybody in this group burdened for an unchurched or unsaved friend? Yes, let’s pray for the sick people. Now, what else can we pray for?”
2. Stories of great things happening in people’s lives.

If there are no stories, then maybe the vision for life transformation has leaked.

3. What people complain about.

If people are complaining about the wrong stuff, then vision is leaking. When they complain about the music, or the parking, or that the church is too big, or there are too many people they don’t know, you can respond, “I know. God is blessing us.” But it’s a sign of vision leakage.

I am often tempted to get frustrated with the people who don’t understand the vision, but I have to ask myself some important questions. What do I need to do to assure that we have a compelling vision as an organization, and what must I do to make sure it doesn’t leak? If the vision is not communicated in a compelling way, then the organization is going to be unfocused. Wherever focus is lacking, only random activity is left. That’s when you wake up and find you don’t like the organization you’re leading.

It’s our job as leaders to get everyone oriented and focused on our main purpose.

If you really take your job seriously and find it the greatest calling that God has for you then you’ve got to put some emotions into your work. You can’t be business as usual. You don’t get promoted by just clocking in and out of work. People get noticed when they put some drama into their work.

Here are some pictures from our church in U-belt. The reason the church is growing by leaps and bounds – passion!!!! You can never pay passion.

The passion was contagious. You could see how this volunteers put a lot of effort in what they do. From the stage design, the cleanliness of the hall, the sound of the band.

You can’t wing emotions. That is why artists are dramatic. They need to feel it. They make a big deal about their work or could I say art. So it doesn’t matter if you are an artist or not – the question is do you put drama into what you do or are you an emotionless employee.

As emotions are displayed in our work, we become contagious. We spread the love for work that matters. People feel it so the atmosphere is filled with it. People start loving going to work, or in our case going to church. They might not fully understand the Scripture but they see something is different here. Why are these people passionate in serving Jesus?

Why do they dedicate their time and effort for worship and service? What do they get in return? Why block off an afternoon for worship practice? Why give up my Friday nights to the church when I could party with my friends? Sometimes we ask the wrong things. Passionate people don’t ask those things. They know their work matters. It gives them a sense of fulfillment. Christ followers count the cost and counting the cost means I deliberately and choose freely to do work that matters. At the end of the day, they know that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Whether they get paid or not, it doesn’t matter. They don’t look who gets the credit. They know what I sow, I will reap. Money can’t pay my passion. You can’t buy this anywhere.

Okay, I think God is specifically saying something to me this month. I’ve read my quota of 3 books this month ( aside from the Bible) and almost all of them tells me to do one thing: GO!!!!

Yes, it’s like God and the Great Commission. Go and Make disciples. You want to change the world. Stop meeting and start something. Go!!! The Bible encourages us to go!!!

Not all the time but most of the time when it comes to obeying God’s commands and will – He says to us go! I think what we lack is not ideas ( most of us have a million dollar ideas that are yet to be released and somebody has gone ahead of you), nor is their a lack of tools ( since the Internet has made it a great equalizer for everyone, whether in the field of business, education or communication), what we usually lack is the initiative.

Sad to say most Christians hide under the guise of “let me pray about it for a thousand years.” Don’t get me wrong, I do pray before I start to do something but I don’t get stuck with prayer. We are called to go!!

For the past few years we have been praying for a space in Greenhills. We have outgrown our current place and so we were on a lookout. We knew God wanted us to expand but how and where and how much? This January we got a call that there is a 1200 sqm of space available for us. It was indeed a miracle to have a space this big available in Greenhills.

We prayed and we knew that God has given us the GO!!! Questions arise ” Where do we get the money? Will our people support it? Isn’t this getting out of what has been working for us already? Why move when we can stay?

Seth Godin calls this the lizard brain. Steven Pressfield labeled this as the resistance. When you know that something worth while is worth doing, your brain tells you not to risk.

The Bible calls it fear and it is not from God.

2 Timothy 1:7 (New International Version)

⁷ For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.

Christians, we can’t just look at the box. We can’t just settle for business as usual. We can’t let the spirit of fear dominate our mind and dictate our actions. God has given us the spirit of power, love and self-discipline. That means I poke the box, go and do work that matters.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ps: The three books I’ve read are

1. Poke the Box by Seth Godin

2. Do the Work by Steven Pressfield – this is free in Amazon Kindle

3. Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson

Here is a vlog I did for our Victory Group Leaders and Discipleship Coaches. Enjoy episode one!!!

The best leadership ingredient every person must have is not vision, charisma, or having the right people in the bus. Those are important things a leader must have but I found out there is something else far more important than that.

While reading through 1 Samuel 14, Saul did something pretty amazing as a leader. He would spot the right people and put them in his team. Talk about leadership. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says to bring your organization to greatness, you have to get the right people in the bus.

1Sam. 14:52 Now there was fierce war with the Philistines all the days of Saul. And when Saul saw any strong man or any valiant man, he took him for himself.

But 1 Samuel did not end in chapter 14:52. In the next verse which is 1 Samuel 15:1 here was the ingredient every leader must have.

1Sam. 15:1 Samuel also said to Saul, “The LORD sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the LORD.

The leader must not only have right people in the bus but he must learn how to obey God’s voice. You can have the best team, the prophet Samuel on your side but if you don’t heed the voice of God then you might end up like Saul:

1Sam. 15:10 ¶ Now the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying,
1Sam. 15:11 “I greatly regret that I have set up Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” And it grieved Samuel, and he cried out to the LORD all night.

Biblical and effective leadership requires that we obey God. Leadership is a gift from God. We must be great stewards of that gift. The best mission statement or having the right people in the bus  won’t cut it out if you choose to abuse and misuse God’s gift of leadership upon your life. It is the Lord who sent us on a mission and all we need to do is stick to the plan.

1Sam. 15:18 Now the LORD sent you on a mission, and said, “Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.’
1Sam. 15:19 Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the LORD?”

Because of Saul’s rebellion against God’s leadership God rejected Him and took his leadership away.

1Sam. 15:22 So Samuel said: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.
1Sam. 15:23     For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He also has rejected you from being king.

The end result of God taking away your leadership is that with it, he takes away the right people in your bus. Samuel departed Saul and Saul asked that he stay so that the people might still honor him as king.

1Sam. 15:30 Then he said, “I have sinned; yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me, that I may worship the LORD your God.”

Saul’s leadership is a sad picture of leadership gone wild. He had the skills needed to be a great leader but because he rebelled against God – the gift of leadership was taken away from him rendering all his skills in building a great organization useless.