My zeal is to invite people into the Kingdom to get to know the King.
He Himself said that this would be an affront to people who were perishing but to those who received it, it was ETERNAL LIFE. I guess I am willing to offend the perishing in order to reach those whom God is saving into eternal life. I feel a responsibility to the people to reach them with the message of Jesus Christ. Im not trying to offend people with my own actions just with the gospel. I don't want to be enslaved to the 'Canadian nice-ism' nor to peoples' opinions of me... not to the detriment of the spread of Christ's Gospel and Kingdom anyways.
No really, the major thing I wanted to tell you about was the G12 concepts where we spend part of our time from doing the work of evangelism to raise up and mentor 12 new christians that have the faith and desire to put God's Kingdom first, into fruit-producing leadership. (This is exactly what Jesus did. Even Paul was mentored into fruitfulness.) You might say that I am fruit obsessed at this time as I feel released from not being allowed to produce fruit.
When you asked me to mentor you I was going though some very heavy shit with the church and so I did not give you the time I wanted to give you. Secondly I didn't quite know HOW to mentor you or to WHAT GOAL. Now at least I have the goal: equipping unto FULL FRUITFULNESS... or to the point where you can mentor someone else, where you are fully an evangelist, small group pastor, and equipper of others to do the same.
I think you have many great qualities about you Neil. I really do. My concern is that you not fall into stagnation, not lose the zeal of the Lord to pursue both Him and His calling in your life. If I am allowed in your life I'd like to increase you zeal instead of seeing it dampened. I don't want to see any young Christian stagnate or still be a baby beeing spoon-fed when you should be being raised up into being a teacher/leader already.
One of the things I'd like to see you do is learn to be a leader of a small group. As you said, If a new Christian is put in a small group of 6-12 active people then they will stay and grow in the church. If we really want the church to grow and fully bring in the harvest then we need these groups to act as baskets to carry the new believer until they can be mentored into fruitfulness themselves. In order to have the groups we need to have the leaders. You alpha leader training is probably a very good start.
If we don't have the leaders for small groups them we won't have the groups and the fruit will be dropped, get lost or trampled under foot. No lasting fruit will result even though we were failthful in harvesting. The new believer needs the small group in order to stay and grow. The new believer need personal pastoring/mentoring until they become fruitful.
The Lord said that the fields were ripe with harvest. We need to train up more workers in the harvest to recognise ripe harvest when they see it. We need to spend at least 10% of our time to do so, to multiply the number of workers for the harvest. New christians full of the Holy Spirit and zeal need to be trained up in harvesting (evangelism), then trained in processing the harvest (leading/pastoring a small group) and then trained in raising up new harvesters themselves(evangelists/pastors).
Look at the world today! what do you see?
90% of the harvest is rotting on the vines because of lack of harvesters.
80% of that which is harvested is dropping out because they don't have that small group in which to plug into the church because there is no leader/pastor for the group.
70% of the harvest which sticks around is trained to sit, shut up and do nothing; their zeal in the Lord growing cold because they are never allowed to do anything, never expected to give anything except their money and pew filling.
Most new christians lose all their non-christian friends very quickly (1/2 in 90 days) and the harvest is lost before it can even be picked. 90% of those who come into the church have come through these types of connections: family, friends and work. If we don't harvest them as soon as possible after the person becomes and Christian then the possible ripe fruit rots away still on the vine and the opportunity is lost. We harvesters need to take 10% of our time to raise up the harvest into being workers in the harvest or the harvest will be lost.
I'm tired of just singing songs. Yes my salvation is by grace and fully guarenteed. I'm not working to obtain the love of God for I know I already have it. But I work to bring Him glory, to bring many to Him, to follow Him, tobuild His Kingdom and to do His will instead of my own. Holy Spirit help me!
sorry for the sermon.
chad