Yesterday, I had the chance to visit with the senior leadership of a very large church in Australia. Fabulous church, wonderful ministry, and really impacting people across the globe. And like a lot of our clients, they are growing very quickly.

As churches often do, they shared with me their staff structure, which had much of the normal setup of high growth churches.

However, I saw a staff position I’ve never seen before.

At the senior level, they have a Pastor of Prayer Ministries. The church has a dedicated ministry of prayer, where people can text in concerns, and the Pastor of Prayer, along with his team, develops a list and notification system so that the volunteers in the prayer ministry are immediately notified.

Unlike some “prayer concerns” (a.k.a. – gossip morsels) I’ve seen elsewhere, these guys are serious. They have developed a volunteer corps that is structured, supervised, and set up such that the church and its prayer needs are being lifted up all day long by at least 4 volunteers – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with individuals taking assigned 30 minute slots.

They told me of a boy who was hit by a car last week in a relatively minor accident. By the time he got to the hospital, he had several people from the church there, and scores of text messages telling him he was being lifted up in prayer. And by the time he got to the hospital, he was healed.

Spiritual and strategic, huh?

I wonder why they’re growing so fast?

When we buried Jack, we were laying to rest a guy who had lived through a lot of conflicted situations at his church. Really tense situations.

At his funeral, one fellow at the center of (and instigator of) the conflicts asked to speak. Nervously, we granted the request. I’m glad we did.

He stood up and delivered.

“You know, we went through a lot together as a church. And I would like to have a lot of those days back. But one thing about Jack was sure. No matter how heated the discussion, no matter how terrible the situation,

Jack was never a part of the problem, and always a part of the solution.”

That’s money. In all my years of leading churches and funerals, I’ve never heard a finer eulogy.

When they bury you, will they say you were a part of the problem, or the solution?

I’m going to try to live on the solution side.

The way I see it, that’s the side of the Empty Tomb.



Ok, so the title is a bit of a teaser. But this came across my screen recently as an anonymous post, and I thought it might lighten the load a bit for you today. Please don’t take it too seriously….

I have no idea who wrote it or who deserves the credit/blame. It just seemed like good Monday humor.

EFFECTIVE AUGUST 1, 2008

NEW OFFICE POLICY

Dress Code:
1) You are advised to come to work dressed accord­ing to
your salary.

2) If we see you wear­ing Prada shoes and car­ry­ing a
Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well finan­cially
and there­fore do not need a raise.

3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to man­age your
money bet­ter, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and
there­fore you do not need a raise.

4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need
to be and there­fore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:
We will no longer accept a doctor’s state­ment as proof
of sick­ness. If you are able to go to the doc­tor, you are able to come to work.

Per­sonal Days:
Each employee will receive 104 per­sonal days a year.
They are called Sat­ur­days & Sundays.

Bereave­ment Leave:
This is no excuse for miss­ing work. There is noth­ing you can do for dead friends,
rel­a­tives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend
the funeral arrange­ments in your place. In rare cases where employee involve­ment is
nec­es­sary, the funeral should be sched­uled in the late after­noon. We will be glad to
allow you to work through your lunch hour and sub­se­quently leave one hour early.

Bath­room Breaks:
Entirely too much time is being spent in the toi­let.
There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the
stalls. At the end of three min­utes, an alarm will
sound, the toi­let paper roll will retract, the stall
door will open, and a pic­ture will be taken. After your
sec­ond offense, your pic­ture will be posted on the
com­pany bul­letin board under the ‘Chronic Offend­ers’
cat­e­gory. Any­one caught smil­ing in the pic­ture will be
sec­tioned under the company’s men­tal health policy.

Lunch Break:

* Skinny peo­ple get 30 min­utes for lunch, as they need
to eat more, so that they can look healthy.

* Nor­mal size peo­ple get 15 min­utes for lunch to get a
bal­anced meal to main­tain their aver­age figure.

* Chubby peo­ple get 5 min­utes for lunch, because that’s
all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loy­alty to our com­pany. We are here
to pro­vide a pos­i­tive employ­ment expe­ri­ence. There­fore,
all ques­tions, com­ments, con­cerns, com­plaints,
frus­tra­tions, irri­ta­tions, aggra­va­tions, insin­u­a­tions,
alle­ga­tions, accu­sa­tions, con­tem­pla­tions, con­ster­na­tion
and input should be directed elsewhere.

The Man­age­ment
Pass this on to all who are employed!

Where do we find hope? That’s a great question for Monday morning.

Not too long ago, I studied and found that the word hope does not occur in the Bible until the book of Ruth. That may not sound important, but a little reflection brought me to  an important realization. The word hope cannot be found in the first five books of the Bible, the books that our faith has called “The Law.” My realization,

You will not find hope in the Law.

You will not find hope in your behavior. Nor will you find it in what you know.  You will find it in a different kind of relationship with God, one that is based on a heart to heart connection to the Risen Savior….even on the day after Easter.

So the Monday question that will bring hope isn’t “Have I done enough?” or “Have I earned enough?” Rather, it’s “How is my daily connection to the dead man who walks?”

Keep that question at the forefront of your soul, and you’ll have hope for Monday.

Today, churches across much of the world observe the Thursday before Easter with “Maundy Thursday” services. It’s an old tradition with origins in Jesus’ last week on earth, particularly the night of the Last Supper, and a powerful memory of the firs Holy Week.

Funny thing is, in that Last Supper, Jesus was ushering in something new, not saying goodbye to something old.

He told his disciples He was starting something new and giving them a new mandate (which has been translated “maundy”).

The new mandate? Jesus took the Seder feast of old, the most sacred ritual in the Jewish year, and turned it upside down.

The old Passover feast looked back, remembering the deliverance God did in Egypt.

The new Passover that Jesus started called His people to look forward to the coming deliverance when all that is wrong is made right.

The vision of the first Lord’s Supper was a bright, optimistic, forward-looking vision of a Last an Permanent Festival at the end of time, not a faint memory or tradition.

Even though He was only moments away from being arrested and beginning His darkest day, Jesus looked forward. Beyond the pain of the immediate to the promise of a better tomorrow.

Do you believe that your best days are yet to come? Do you live looking forward, or backward? Jesus always set His eyes forward.

And that made all the difference.