In this week's conversation between Dr. James Emery White and co-host Alexis Drye, they discuss a survey from Lifeway that was the subject of an article titled “Most Churchgoers Say They Want to Serve, Fewer Actually Do” - and that's fewer to the tune of a mere 30%. This leaves many pastors and ministry leaders struggling with how to cultivate the drive for people to act on their desire to serve.
Episode Links
Dr. White talked about the importance of having pastors directly speak to the church about the need for people to serve - to do more with their one and only life. There are a couple series that he delivered at Mecklenburg Community Church that you may be interested in checking out. The first is one that inspired the title of this podcast episode, “Get Off Your ‘But',” which attempts to break down the four primary excuses that people have for not serving. The second is titled “Maximum Impact” and speaks not only to the need to serve, but also the need to evangelize (because the same gap that exists between intention and action with regards to serving also exists with evangelism).
Continuing on the topic of the need to evangelize, Dr. White shared a story from Ken Gire's book Seeing What Is Sacred about the ripple effect that bringing others into a relationship with Christ can have.
Finally, your S.H.A.P.E. came up frequently in today's discussion. The idea of finding your S.H.A.P.E. comes from Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life. Dr. White delivered a great series at Meck called “Living on Purpose,” with the third installment of that series specifically focusing on your S.H.A.P.E.
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