from flickr by alphabrasil

This evening, Nicky Gumbel only asked Rick Warren one question, which is: “what do you do if your church is numerically small and your congregation is elderly?”

Warren replied: “Start with the love of God. To get to the point where you know God loves you.” He said “We are almost inoculated against the phrase ‘God loves you’ because we’ve heard it so often. When Jesus was asked to summarise the bible he replied: “love God, love your neighbour.” In other words it’s all about love. People are looking for love.

Warren said: “The early church loved people. And within 300 years, Caesar was a Christian. We only know two things about that period: a) it was against the law to be a Christian, and b) they had no church buildings.” Then he talked about how Christians took care of sick people during the black plague.

Then on the subject of faith, Warren said: “You didn’t choose your background, your nationality, the gifts you were born with, the gifts you’re not born with. You choose how much you believe God. The reason God uses me, is because I expect God to use me.” Boom!

Warren is looking for leadership that is not afraid to believe God. He commented: “God uses people who have a great dream.” (E.g. According to your faith will it be done to you. The just shall live by faith etc) God responds to faith. The way you respond to faith is by setting a goal.”

Then came the challenge: “Set a goal for the rest of your life. I have set some giant goals for my life. If I told you, you’d reply: ‘Rick, who do you think you are?’ But you build your goals on who you think God is. You determine the size of your goal, by the size of your God.”

OK? So what prevents this sort of growth? Warren answers: “You must then be willing to risk failure. The key to Paul and Barnabas’ life was that they risked their lives for the sake of the gospel.”

He was full of carefully packaged, but accurate summaries of vast chunks of biblical theology. He made all his take-aways memorable. For example. “There are 3 types of church leadership, you can be a risk-taker, a caretaker or an under-taker.”

How do you take risks? “Get rid of the fear of failure. It’s what keeps you from attempting great things for God.”

How do you avoid fear of failure? Warren replies: “Failure is not setting a goal. Don’t call it failure. Call it an education.”

What is God doing in your life? Warren chimes back: “He’s doing what you expect him to. No more and no less!”

You must never give up!

On playing your part in the body of Christ, Warren said: “You’re not one in a million, you’re one in six billion.”

Here’s the question I was asking myself on the bus home . . . What is stopping me from growing?

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