Brave. Radical. Fearless. Awake. Step Up. Next level. All In.
I hear these words everywhere in Christian circles. I long to step up to be radical for Christ. The last women’s conference left me pumped to conquer the world for Christ. I was ready to charge hell with a water pistol. “Go Big or Go Home” was my fleshly way of doing ministry.
When I started in women’s ministry, I started with a bang – big events, large group teaching with all the bells and whistles. It works great until women want the next new thing. I couldn’t keep up. The demand for more creativity, different topics, and new flashy events kept me up at night. The pressure got to me. I lost sleep and stayed up at night worried about numbers. Something had to change. I couldn’t conjure up anything else. I was tired and irritated. God stepped in. Thankfully.
It was back to the drawing board. It was time to simplify. I started with my core team. I took six months and we walked through a discipleship process. We spent our time together praying, memorizing Scripture, and walking through the Word.
Creative, I know. After a few months, that team picked a few ladies and did the same with them. Within 6 months, we had over 60 ladies who were weekly doing discipleship together. In the fall, we will have enough leaders to walk our entire women’s through the discipleship.
There is a subtle but dangerous way of thinking creeping into ministry. We all want God to work in big ways. Somehow, that has turned into us thinking WE had to work in big ways. Have we forgotten that His ways are not our ways?
The crazy thing was that the smaller group I focused on, the bigger impact God had. I don’t have to put on a huge elaborate feast every week to make sure the people God has entrusted to me are being fed. This is the God who feeds thousands with a few loaves and fish. I need to not worry so much about what my loaves and fish are going to look or seem like humanly, but steward my loaves and fish in such a way that I can bring them to God each week and trust Him to do big things with them. Jesus was the savior of the world yet he still spent most of his time with small groups pouring into them. I’m not saying that we never have a big event after all Jesus could also be found at a party making the most of that!! My focus is keeping all aspects of my life in order so I always have loaves to give Him so that He can do the big things!! Now to me, that’s brave, because I’m no longer trying to steal His power.
Published October 29, 2015
