This verse from God’s Word says it all:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:7-8 NLT)

Words cannot express how much you mean to us. We are grieving, but not like the rest of men who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13).  On behalf of my family, thank you for your love and support.

Chris Hodges

Highlands Wednesday Night Message from Greg Surratt Plus Special Message by Billy Hornsby

1. Provide a mid-week meeting where there is one hour of expository Bible teaching. Stream it live to those who can’t attend. (1 hour)

2. Provide small groups that meet for teaching scripture and have discussion of a biblical topic. (1 hour)

3. Encourage the reading of the Bible such as the One Year Bible plan. Do it as a congregation and encourage them often to participate. (1.5 hours per week)

4. Encourage everyone in the church to discuss their questions about scripture and Christian living with a more mature and wiser Christian friend. (1 hour)

5. Look for opportunities to make discipleship a lifestyle rather than just another service in the week. (? hours)

Adding numbers 1-4 to the discipleship regimen of your church would add 234 hours per year of increased discipleship opportunities. The total would rise from 15.6 hours per year to a total of 249.6 hours per year. Then if you employ point number 5 a few times per year you would pass 250 hours per year…Just a thought.

Call me crazy…

Billy Hornsby

Can I be successfully discipled by attending Sunday services regularly? So much attention is given to having a great Sunday service that you would hope that the event could reach the lost and disciple the believer. Of course, much attention should be given to preaching and reading of the Word on Sundays as well as any other times Christians gather together. But Sunday alone could never “make disciples” in the real biblical sense. Act 5:42…”And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.” Daily in the temple and house to house was the key to New Testament discipleship.

For the sake of comparison I calculated how many hours a year the average Christian sits under the teaching of his/her pastor. This will shock you.

15.6 hours per year!

Where do I get these numbers? Simple: There are 52 Sundays in the year – the average message is ½ hour (30 minutes) – and the average church has only 60% of its congregation in attendance on any given Sunday. If you multiply 30 minutes by 52 Sundays you get 26 hours, then take the 26 hours by an average of 60% attendance (some will never miss some will come occasionally) you have that average of 15.6 hours per year…. That’s if the average member of your church attends 31 services in the year. Amazing.

This does not take into consideration the power of the worship experience and the presence of the Holy Spirit…it is purely crunching the numbers….just over  a half of a day per year.

Consider these stats from the Nielson Company – Per year the average American watches 1800 hours of TV, spend 360 hours on the internet, 36 hours watching video on the internet and 36 hours watching video on their cell phones. Wonder why we might be losing the war in the spiritual?

This makes for a great case for small groups, mid-week teaching services and anything else you can do to make disciples of church members.

Billy Hornsby

When quitting is not an option but you are crashing emotionally and financially, how do you stay in the game?  What do you do when you only see your wife and kids between lunch and dinner instead of at lunch and dinner? You forget important personal dates because every week is sermon preparation time and it’s like cramming for finals at college. You cram, preach, cram, preach, cram preach and it never ends…and it never will end.

Then there are staff issues and disgruntled people who want fully developed youth and children programs but don’t want to volunteer. And of course there are the agendas. New people coming in that promise you the world if you will do church the way their old church did church.  Or, they come with a box of teaching tapes from their favorite “televangelist” asking you to listen to them and maybe pick up a few lessons for the church.

Of course we couldn’t leave out meeting space. There is never the perfect place. You are always remodeling, building out storefronts, getting kicked out of the school you started in or the movie theater just doubled your rent…they know they can do it because you just sent out 60,000 piece mailer telling the world that is where you meet.

Then, because you are a young couple with passion for ministry and each other, the pregnancy test comes back positive…you are so happy to add to the family at this stage of your life. Your other four “church plant” children from other attempts to start a church love the fact that they are going to have to share their fourth of the bedroom they sleep in at your two-bedroom apartment.

Staying Power is defined as: the power to withstand hardship or stress; “like the marathon tests a runner’s endurance”

Church planting is a fast-paced marathon. You can’t just lay back and run a slow steady pace and expect to sprint ahead when you fall back. No, you have to stay near to the front of the pack with the newest marketing ideas, sermon series, and tech thing-a-ma-jigs. You can’t stop but you want to. What to do?

1. Remember that He is faithful who called you.
2. No matter how tough it gets, enjoy the journey. You will have tons of illustrations for the future.
3. Keep a written record of all your experiences and discover what you learned from each one.
4. Get lots of counsel and encouragement from other church planters who have “been there, done that.”
5. Renew your devotion to Jesus personally and your commitment to build His Church.
6. Count the number of changed lives that are now in your church because of your obedience and rejoice.
7. Work as hard as you can to make this church plant successful…because you don’t want to ever do this again.

Billy Hornsby

With huge numbers of Americans staying away from church on Sunday it easy to find someone who needs Christ and His Church. Barna reports that nearly 60% of Americans avoid the church building each week. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/113452/evidence-bad-times-boosting-church-attendance.aspx)

How can we increase the growth rate of these churches is the big question these days. I believe that are answers for us to consider. First of all we need to believe that God wants to reach more souls and that we should always be focused on the people for whom Christ died… especially the ones that are not in the church. There are millions of souls that need to come to Christ and let’s face it, we are the only ones that can make that happen. It is our task to bring the Gospel to the lost and hurting world.

We need 1000’s of new successful churches to reach the un-churched in America. Churches that are life-giving, evangelistic and disciple-making at their core. This means there needs to be a whole new breed of pastors that are true shepherds that are interested in the lost sheep. True shepherds would have the following characteristics.

1. Authentic – Give people the real person, not just a “persona.”

2. Compassionate – Love the people more than just the work that he does.

3. Accepting – Loving and accepting people where they are. (This does imply that you approve of their lifestyle)

4. Gospel oriented – He must know that the Gospel of Christ is the only way salvation and freedom.

5. Relevant – He would preach messages that are grace-filled and applicable to everyday life.

6. Equipper – Pastors need to equip the members to “do” the work of the ministry, not possess the ministry.

7. Pray – Pastors must lead their congregation in prayer and fasting.

The hope of the world is the Church… and the hope of the Church is Christ and His under-shepherds. Let’s pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send laborers into the harvest.

Q. How can we get more leaders to plant life-giving churches in the USA?

Billy

God doesn’t waste anything that He does. In the 1970’s there was a great move from religion to power. In the 1980’s  it was a move to empower preaching and teaching ministries. In 1990’s it was all about Small Groups and Cell Group; a time when thousands of people all over the USA we equipped to lead the church. Then in 2000-2010 there was, and still exists, the Church Planting movement. In each of these eras God was preparing men and women for a great 21^st Century harvest. Let’s focus on the 1990’s in this article.

From 1990 till 2000 I was very involved in training churches that wanted to transition from a program based church to a “cell” based churched. The idea was to put all programs into small groups (cells). In order for this to be successful it was necessary to train church members to do several things. We actually equipped church member to become small group leaders that helped pastor the church. For us it was a huge church growth experience that shared about around the world. Here is what we trained each leader to do.

They learned:

1. How to gather people.
2. How to lead a meeting.
3. How to share a lesson, lead a Bible study,  and pray.
4. How to pray with people and minister to their needs.
5. They also learned how to raise up associate leaders.
6. They learned how get in touch with God and intercede for group members.
7. Finally, they learned how to multiply their group.

As we grew to several hundred groups some wonderful things began to happen. There was a new emphasis on evangelism and thousands came to Christ in the homes of our leaders. Some of the groups grew to 50 people or more and would multiply into several groups. Our members became “pastors” in the truest meaning of the word. The leaders grew spiritually and in experience. It was wonderful.

Over the years several of our leaders actually launched out and planted churches. They saw that the small group was their training ground but that God had something bigger for them. In other words, their ministry was bigger than just their home and God wanted to add many other souls to their care and leadership. All they needed was permission.

Now, you may be totally suited to a small “house church” and should never venture out. On the other hand, you may feel God is saying, “Go launch a church, an Attractional church that is missional.” You have the call of God and now you are ready. ARC can help.

At our website www.arcchurches.com you can find out what the process is to become an ARC church plant. We provide the knowhow, the coaching, training and resources for you to launch a new church. Let’s work together to reach this nation with vibrant, refreshing and relevant churches that reach lost souls in our communities.

In this blog post I want to give you permission to do something bigger, something wider, broader, and more impactful than a small group experience. Pray and ask God if He will also grant you that permission. – Billy

“A man’s converts are always a disgrace to him. It is only those that God converts that
will last. When we go fresh into a place, there is always a number of people who hear
with a degree of profit, and who are affected by us. But let that minister be taken
away, and they go back again. One wave washes them up on the shore, and the
return wave sucks them back again into the great deeps.”

“Oh,” writes one to me this week, “I have believed that Jesus died for me, but it does
not keep me from sinning in any way whatever. Our minister says that if we believe
that Jesus died for us we shall be saved.” No, no, but that is not the gospel, and such
a belief is not faith at all. I did not wonder that a poor creature should have tried
such a gospel and found it fail. Do not these men say that Christ died for everybody,
and then declare that if you believe he died for you (which he must of necessity have
done if he died for everybody) then that will save you, and yet there are scores and
hundreds who are proofs to the fact that it does not save them, but that they can
believe this universal redemption and live as they did before? “

“I have known, in my short time, certain churches, in the paroxysms of delirium,
meeting houses crowded, aisles filled, preachers stamping and thundering, hearers
intoxicated with excitement, and persons converted by wholesale—even children
converted by hundreds—they said thousands. Well, and a month or two after, where
were the congregations? where were the converts? Echo has answered, “Where,
where?” Why, the converts were worse sinners than they were before; or mere
professors, puffed up into a superficial religion, from which they soon fell into a
hopeless coldness, which has rendered it difficult ever to stir them again.”

What are you thoughts about these “superficial converts?”

Billy

“But the God we must see is not the utilitarian God who is having such a run of popularity today, whose chief claim to men’s attention is His ability to bring them success in their various undertakings and who for that reason is being cajoled and flattered by everyone who wants a favor. The God we must learn to know is the Majesty in the heavens, God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God our Savior. He it is that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in, who bringeth out His starry host by number and calleth them all by name through the greatness of His power, who seeth the works of man as vanity, who putteth no confidence in princes and asks no counsel of kings.

Knowledge of such a Being cannot be gained by study alone. It comes by a wisdom the natural man knows nothing of, neither can know, because it is spiritually discerned. To know God is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world. It is easy because the knowledge is not won by hard mental toil, but is something freely given. As sunlight falls free on the open field, so the knowledge of the holy God is a free gift to men who are open to receive it. But this knowledge is difficult because there are conditions to be met and the obstinate nature of fallen man does not take kindly to them.”

What saith thou?

Billy