March 2019
Upcoming Mission and Ministry Schedule
February 24, March 3, March 31: Teach Cornerstone class, Park Church of Christ, Broken Arrow, OK
March 14-18: Dominican Republic (teach, preach, leadership seminar, evangelistic campaign)
March 24: Preach and Mission Report, Fort Gibson, OK
May 10-20: Mission Trip to El Salvador and Honduras
Listings with specific dates are confirmed. I hope you will attend an event when I am in your area. Contact me for specific details of events listed or to schedule an event. A few open dates for shorter activities remain on my 2019 Calendar.
#thinksouls -- #SoulPassion
#thinksouls and #SoulPassion are the #1 Requirement in Evangelism, Mission Work, Church Leadership!
You've listened to such speakers, right? Within a few minutes, their passion is obvious, overwhelming. They bound to the podium, they bounce up and down, they run back and forth, their passion is contagious, infectious.
A mission deacon wrote me after a mission presentation in his church -- "your passion for mission work is contagious!" #MissionPassion! Absolutely! Christians today have an incredible opportunity to reach the nations of the world in our generation. I want to help you love the people of the world that you have never seen, appreciate the places you have not visited personally, connect with national workers who are incredibly committed to taking the gospel to their friends and neighbors! I want you to understand the amazing opportunities that are before us, I want you to have open eyes, open hearts, fervent prayers. I want you to talk constantly about what God is doing, I want you to be part of it. I want you to love our world like Jesus did, I want you to think souls -- #thinksouls. I want you to think eternity -- #thinketernity.
I hope my love is infectious. I want you to catch it. I want you to share it.
Because I am in love with Jesus, I am in love with the gospel. I want you to love Jesus so much that you cannot help but talk about him, who he is, what he does, what he means to you. I want you to love the message about Jesus because you love Jesus.
Because I am in love with the gospel, I am in love with evangelism and mission work that presents the gospel to our world. I am in love with mission work that changes the eternal destiny of the multitudes. I want to encourage you toward a greater involvement in evangelism and mission work. I know that such involvement comes from loving what God loves. I want you to love Jesus so much that you love to speak the Good News. I want you to relish and rejoice in the Good News so much that you are always thinking [#thinksouls] and praying [#praysouls] about how to spread that Good News. I want you to think souls because you love souls [#lovesouls], but even more, because you love Jesus and his message.
I love the church. I love the church because those on whose shoulders I stand also loved the church. But I would like to think that my love for the church goes beyond those whose influence I appreciate. I love the church because it is the body of Christ, the presence of Christ, the reality of Christ in our world. It should not surprise me that I ended up involved in ministry. These ideas -- loving Jesus, loving the message of Jesus, loving the people of Jesus, loving the body of Jesus -- come together in evangelism, missions, preaching, teaching. I have spent my life in the only job I really ever wanted in my adult life. I am not amazed that church history tells about Jesus' disciples going into all the earth planting churches.
When someone loves Jesus and the gospel so much that she or he becomes an authentic disciple of Jesus, that person wants to share the Good News. That person thinks constantly about how to do that. That person loves what God loves, that person loves the world as God loved the world. That person loves the church. That love is contagious! #SoulPassion is essential for everyone who seriously seeks to serve in evangelism, missions, and church leadership.
Here is my prayer! May I live demonstrating my passion for Jesus, evangelism, mission work, and the church. My work with the church has defined the entirety of my life -- leading the church, building up the church, growing the church. I ate, slept, and dreamed evangelism and mission work. That was my life, and then God blessed me with the opportunity to keep doing it and at the same time teach and train others, to share with the next generation my love for Jesus, the Gospel, evangelism, mission work, the church. After that, God blessed me with the opportunity to expand the teaching and training into all the world!
The church is the most exciting, most powerful, most important thing on earth. What an honor God has given me to encouraging healthy, spiritual, growing, multiplying churches. My heart aches when the church struggles and fails to explode with the power of God for salvation-doubling, tripling, multiplying! Such growth is possible, I have seen it! It has happened in the past, it is happening! Brothers and sisters, let us love as God loves, let us love what God loves -- #thinksouls!! #SoulPassion
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This article is available in PDF format at: #thinksouls -- #SoulPassion
