Tips & tools to Multiply Your Impact

Over the years, I have developed the skill set of fasting and prayer. Honestly, when I first started out during my Bible College days, I never made it more than a few hours. Every time I would go to fast, I would end up eating! Some of my good friends fasted for weeks. Somehow, I could not last even a day.

Then, I learned the secret of accountability. Having a partner you did not want to disappoint, helped me stay with it. First it was three days. Then five. Then an entire week. Eventually, I grew to where 21 days of fasting (liquid only) became a pattern for me every January.

But even then, I was sometimes just miserable and hungry the entire time! My focus was still on my empty growling stomach, and how much longer I had to go until I would be able to eat again. It was like grinding it out till the end of a 'hunger strike' rather than an intimate time in relationship with God.

Okay...I might be exaggerating a little bit. But there were many days I felt like 'What's the point!?' This is just awful. So here's five things that I have learned to do to make my season of fasting and prayer powerful and more meaningful.

#1 - I CLEAR AS MUCH CLUTTER FROM MY SCHEDULE

My first mistake was that I was working just as hard during my fast as I was the rest of the year. I kept a full schedule of appointments. When I came home at night, I was exhausted. So I ended up dealing with my fatigue by laying on the couch and watching a TV program or sporting event, and craving the food advertised during every commercial.

When I decided to limit my number of appointments, and carve out more time for solitude, my entire approach changed. It's not that I was getting less done, or just vegging out. But my time of solitude allowed me to think about longer term planning. I had space to think. Dream. Evaluate. Discern.

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As we come to the close of another crazy year, I thought I would take a moment and recommend some of the best articles that have impacted my thinking over the past year. It's amazing how this new era, which suddenly came upon us in 2020, has made me even more hungry to learn and grow.

Most of the listed articles ignited in me a desire for further study, with some of the articles recommending books that I went on to read. But I used all of these articles as discussion points with some of the key leaders in my life.

These are listed in no particular order. But I hope you are as benefited by them as I have been:

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It seems like every few weeks, my wife and I have the same conversation. "Can you believe what has happened in the last two years!? Remember when we were totally locked down? I never thought it would last this long or get this weird!" We are still just trying to make sense of it all.

One thing we are still trying to get our heads around is how much people's church attendance has changed. Carey Nieuwhof said in his recent blog post, "During the pandemic, however, new habits were formed. The longer the lockdown lasted, the deeper the habits. As a result, casual attendees and members who were nominally committed to the church or the Christian faith drifted away (more on why below), leaving you with mostly…Engagers. For the most part, the Engagers returned. The disengaged didn’t.”

Secondly, things that were previously beneath the surface have been uncovered and exposed: attitudes, opinions, affiliations, belief systems, patterns and political leanings. It's all been brought to the surface in all of its wonder and glory...and ugliness.

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Last week, I saw an Instagram post from one of my pastor friends who is currently raising young children. It was a picture of a scene in Star Wars, where Yoda is dying. The quote on the meme was, "Once I became a parent I finally understood the scene where Yoda gets so tired of answering Luke's questions he just dies!"

When I saw that, I laughed out loud (literally L-O-L). I remember those days! There are so many ways in which parenting leaves us exasperated and exhausted. Whether it is chasing a two year old around the room or battling it out with your teenager about what is fair and unfair, raising kids is one of the most challenging experiences anyone can ever endure.

So let me give you five reasons why you should have hope today:

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A few weeks ago, I completed two weeks of teaching at the Allison Park Leadership Academy on the BOOK OF ACTS. Honestly, this is one of my favorite books of the Bible because helps us deconstruct what is current cultural Christianity, and reconstruct the paradigm that is based on the function of the early church.

At the very beginning of the book, Jesus is speaking to his disciples just after his resurrection and before his ascension. It is during this moment that he challenges them to take the gospel to every nation on earth. He asks his followers to lead people into the revolution of the Kingdom of God.

But he also warns them with a promise.

“Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 1:4-5

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We have experienced something in the last few weeks that has been so incredibly healthy for us as a church! During the month of September, we decided to do a series entitled GRAB THE BATON, as we took some time to celebrate the fact that I have now been the Lead Pastor at Allison Park Church for three decades.

The purpose of a celebration of an anniversary is to mark the moment; to pull up the memories of what makes the shared relationship special; to thank God for His faithfulness; and to renew the commitment to the future together.

This is what we have been doing during this sermon series. Our hope is that the next generation, who was not here thirty years ago, will hear the stories of the past, understand the DNA of what makes us unique, and grab that baton so that they can run their race.

As a part of the weekend messages, I have been sharing some of the key moments, miracles, and marks of what God has done at APC over the years. Somehow, the experience of looking back has helped us prepare to move past the stress and tension of the last two years, so that we can move forward again.

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I will never forget the moment when I heard John Maxwell quote Benjamin J. Hooks, “He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following only taketh a walk!” I laughed out loud, not only at the creative use of ‘King James’ English, but by the stark and obvious nature of the truth revealed in that observation!

Leadership is more than just a position. It is so much more than just a title. True leadership is evidenced by the fact that someone or some group of people are actually attached to and following you. This reality seems to be of the the biggest needs within the atmosphere of Allison Park Church (and beyond that probably every church) in the season we are in.

Here’s my assessment of where we are right now: Prior to the pandemic (which I guess now is an endemic), it was already challenging to get people to connect within a local church. We have three primary ways we hope to get people into relationships beyond a weekend experience:

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Was anyone else surprised by the polarization and division that surfaced during 2020? I have to admit that I was! But then again, I wasn’t. Sure, I knew that there was significant and growing political division by the tone of the 2016 presidential debates. In addition, the intensity of news coverage seemed to widen the polarization, as news channels battled each other daily. But I had no idea the depth of this division until it all came boiling to the surface in 2020. Now, it is the new norm of our world and it seems like there is no going back.

About five years ago, I began to feel God convicting me to become better at bridge building. While I was very active in helping other churches get started in my city and had been in a multi-denominational pastors’ prayer group for twenty-five years, I had not taken enough time to get to know leaders from different backgrounds and perspectives. The pastors in my regional prayer group were all white and evangelical. The pastors in my network were all from my tribe or were spiritual sons and daughters. I had attempted some bridge-building activities, but it was sporadic, at best.

When the shooting at the Tree of Life Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh occurred in October of 2018, I watched a memorial service on TV with local pastors, rabbi’s, and priests. I wondered aloud to myself, “Why I am not invited into that room? I’ve been serving here in this city for almost thirty years.” The answer was simple, I had not worked hard enough to build relationships with people who are different than me and people who lead in different parts of my city.

This tragedy deeply impacted me and compelled me to make a more intentional and disciplined effort to go to lunch, listen, and learn from other leaders around my city. I carved out time every month to meet with someone new and hear their story.

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In my last post, I talked about five things that were exposed through the pandemic of 2020. These were things that I had not see before. My perceptions about our strength and health as a church were blurred by signs of growth and success. What I discovered is that we were a lot more out of shape spiritually and organizationally than I thought!

What were those five discoveries? Tribalism, Misalignment, Division, Superficiality, and Dysfunction.

So what do we do about these things? How do we start to add some depth, alignment, health, and stamina to who we are? How do we begin to prepare our churches to thrive and grow into the future?

1. THE SOLUTION TO TRIBALISM: Model & Teach A Healthy Approach To Social Media & The News

If you have not yet watched the Netflix documentary, ‘The Social Dilemma’ - you need to take the time to do so. It documents how algorithms are built into the business model of the various social media platforms that is designed to selectively determine the narrow amount of content that you see, with unique strategies to keep you engaged and addicted to their sites.

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When I was in Central Bible College, I played on the basketball team for my first two years. I was never a superstar, by any means, and most of the time, I cheered my team wildly from the bench! But I thoroughly enjoyed being part of those seasons.

My junior and senior years, I chose not to play so that I could concentrate on other leadership opportunities. During that time, I was not as concentrated on fitness. No sprints. No long practices. I was still in shape, but not in top condition.

It was during that time that I, and several other former varsity players, were asked to scrimmage against the J.V. team. I remember walking into the gym with supreme confidence. My former teammates and I were commenting on how we would “wipe the floor” with this lowly J.V. squad.

That’s not what happened! We got exposed!!!

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Over the years, I have come to appreciate the unique and often ironic insights that we get from the book of Proverbs. It seems obvious that the Holy Spirit inspired Solomon to write out of his own painful leadership experiences.

One of the most painful and challenging areas of leadership involves handling people who are not just difficult, but are downright impossible! If you have been leading for any length of time, you probably had several faces pop into your head when you read that that last statement!

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Let me start this article with a confession. There are many days as a leader and as a pastor that I feel insecure about my person and my performance! There, I said it!

Yes, it’s true that I have been the Lead Pastor at one church for the last almost thirty years. Yes, I am known as the pastor who is willing to intentionally send people, money, and leaders with church planters to help establish a new church. We have now done that over thirty times over the years.

But insecurity creeps up on every leader, no matter who you are.

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In just a few weeks, we will cross over the one year anniversary of when almost every church in the world began some type of conversion to an online service, broadcast, or campus. At Allison Park Church we had been broadcasting our service on Facebook Live and on our website platform for several years.

We are also a multi-campus church and have been live-streaming the message, from time to time, to all of our locations. That was certainly an advantage on March 14, 2020 - when we were forced to move all of our locations and services online during the first ‘fifteen days to slow the spread.’

What we already had in place at that time was a production team that understood how the technology worked, cameras in the auditorium to capture the service, a switcher to move between cameras for different angles, and at least someone on Facebook monitoring the chat during the live experience.

We quickly discovered that there is so much more to it.

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As I write this, I am now entering the twenty-fifth year where I have been actively involved in helping other churches get started. Back in the fall of 1996, Allison Park Church helped to plant its very first church in Mars, Pennsylvania! Since that time, we have now helped to directly parent thirty-one new churches, and have assisted other multiplying churches to do the same. Overall, we have worked with more than one hundred planters to see over a hundred church plants launched.

Our season of multiplication happened to coincide with an era of aggressive church multiplication.

• New and creative forms of multiplication emerged through the advent of the multi site movements.

• Church Planting organizations were founded that provided funding, training, coaching, and best practices.

• Buzz was in the air. Church planting was cool. It was what emerging or younger leaders were doing and everyone, it seemed, wanted in on it.

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One of the major things that I have attempted to do in the last ten month, in every decision that we have made regarding our approach to Covid-19, is consider the needs of my team before anything else . My first question has been, how does this affect the staff? I want to come out on the other side of this with a strong, unified, and healthy team.

When it comes to a leaders health and well-being, I recognize that there are certain things that I can do as the leader of the organization to build a healthy culture. But there are some things that are completely out of my control. The fact of the matter is:

No one can be responsible for the health of your soul but you!

Culture. Work environment. Positive circumstances. Mentoring. All these things can help add value to your soul-health, but none of them are the determining factor. The absence of some things makes it more challenging to be healthy, but not impossible.

It’s like the Proverbs says in chapter four, verse 23: Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. Do you hear that? You, guard your heart. That’s the challenge. It’s up to you. If you do a great job at that, the rest of your life flows from that one developed skill-set. So how do we invest in the health of our own soul?

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