One of my favorite football quotes came at halftime when my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers were leaving the field after playing a lackluster (and losing) first half. The sportscaster who cornered legendary coach Tom Osborne asked him, “Coach, what adjustments are you going to have to make to win this one?” In typical Osborne fashion he gave her a thoughtful look and said something like “We’re going to have to score more points than they do next half”.
Sometimes the key to success is simple, but that doesn’t make it easy.
In the last 35 years I have had the privilege of serving 5 churches and consulting with over 100 more, and every one of them has wrestled with how to best carry out the mission the Lord gave us–to make disciples. In the last year, our congregation has experienced something that has allowed us to do this more effectively than any situation I have ever seen. It isn’t new–we stole it from another church who stole it from another church…you get the picture. But the difference is we made a commitment to see it through.
What are we doing? We’re talking about our relationship with the Lord.
But doesn’t every church do this?
NO! We like the preachers to talk about it, and maybe the occasional member giving a testimony. But in 35 years I haven’t been part of a ministry where the culture of the church is systematically based on talking about our relationship with the Lord.
We have set a goal of meeting with every person in our church junior high and above and doing what we’re calling a Spiritual Health Assessment. In this we do two things: we ask where they are in their relationship with the Lord (using the image of a table, which seat do they occupy?) and how they are doing in putting the essentials into their lives (the things God designed for our lives: Worship, Prayer, Bible Study, Service, Relationships, Tithing, and Sharing our faith).
So far, we’re in the neighborhood of 200 SHAs, and dozens more being scheduled. When someone comes to the Lord, we immediately do the SHA. When we do counseling, we start with the SHA. When people take our membership class we sign them up for an SHA. Everyone who will let us, with the goal of doing this with everyone in the church once a year.
What we’ve found is that we are getting real about our faith in a way I’ve never seen before. We’re finding people who aren’t even Christians but have been acting the part and are now at a point of making a decision for the Lord. We’re discovering people whose lives aren’t anything like what we assumed from our contacts–and we discover this because people seem to want to be honest about their faith.
Because they want to be spiritually healthy.
And in this process we have seen many people making serious changes for the better–many reports of amazing spiritual growth.
It isn’t complicated. It’s actual simple. It just requires that we take spiritual growth seriously.
If anyone is interested in learning more, I invite you to go to www.nocc.org and click on the banner about the “chairs” discussion. You’ll see two videos which explain the basics of what we discuss in our Spiritual Health Assessments—enough for you to do your own assessment if you like.
It isn’t “ours”. This has been around since the scriptures were written. We have just decided it’s time to talk about them. We invite you to join us!
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