Leadership Vistas International Ministries

04/24/2023

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/4/23/23694169/ugandas-extreme-anti-lgbtq-legislation-explained

This is an important issue for Christian churches worldwide. While the Ugandan government stands against deviations from traditional sexuality, cultures everywhere are faced with increasing numbers of people who are convinced that “this is how God created” them.

Pastors and church leaders must look to the Bible to determine what’s true about the situation. Generally speaking, God created mankind to live the way His Word prescribes. The Bible is clear that the traditional sexuality is the only one acceptable to God.

https://www.moodybible.org/beliefs/positional-statements/human-sexuality/

What we must understand is that the people who think they are gay, for example, are tempted. But those temptations need not define us. The Bible also tells us how to respond to our temptations. Simply put, we are to flee temptation, resist temptation, rebuke temptation, and ask God for strength in these things.

https://www.openbible.info/topics/temptation

So the challenge for today’s church in any country is to love the sinner without embracing the sin. Love the tempted without giving the temptation legitimacy to define the tempted. Remember, they are tempted and not defined. They are deceived and not defined. It is our job to love and lead these people to a better conclusion about who they are and how they must live.

Any questions?

A version of Uganda’s "kill the g**s" bill will likely become law, after years of campaigning.

04/01/2023

The book of Jeremiah is a great place to learn about "corporate sin" and God's perspective on it. Corporate sin is simply the collective sins of an organization, country, county, church, etc. It's what the humans cause the organization to do and/or become.

If you want to see how angry God can get over the sins of His people, just read Jeremiah 19:1-14. These few verses provide a very vivid picture of God's anger at sin. You don't want to miss this!

03/25/2023

In Jeremiah 13:23, Jeremiah tells the people of Israel that their sin has become so bad that there is basically no hope for them because they are incapable of change, incapable of true repentance.

Evidently the people had become so used to doing evil that they had lost their ability to change. Through Jeremiah, God was warning his people to repent before it became impossible to change,.

My Bible explains it this way. Our attitudes and patterns for living can become so set that we lose all desire to change and then no longer fear the consequences of remaining as we are. We lose the motive for change.

So what do YOU think? Can people get beyond hope because they get beyond repentance? If so, how does this happen and how do you think God wants us to respond to such people?

03/19/2023

A study released in January by the American Enterprise Institute utilized data polling thousands of Americans about their religious identity and worship attendance.

It found that religious attendance has DECLINED since the pandemic. The data indicates that 8% of all Americans have NOT returned to the house of worship they previously attended prior to the COVID pandemic—including 13% of young adults ages 18 to 29.

So why haven’t they returned to worship in person, in the fellowship of others? What do YOU think?

03/11/2023

This is an interesting read - the perspective of different religions regarding people who do NOT share that particular faith.

For example, see what the Muslims think the fate of non-Muslims will be, as well as the answer to that question from the world's largest religions.

Many people of faith describe the “others” who do not follow their religion as less happy and healthy, and lacking in strength and morality.

02/17/2023

https://www.insider.com/pastor-died-trying-to-fast-food...
Pastors, this story (see link) has a tragic ending. All Christians should learn from this pastor's poor example though. His fast resulted in his death. That is a sure sign that his fast was not of God. This man was deceived about what fasting is and/or what fasting is all about.
The most remarkable thing about Jesus' famous 40-day fast was that Jesus survived it!
When a Christ-follower is called by God to fast for any period of time - he or she can expect to survive the fast. It should NEVER end in someone's death. If it does, that is a sure sign the fast was of the devil.
Look, fasting is not an end unto itself. Rather the purpose of fasting is to focus our minds and bodies for a spiritual reason. Whenever you fast, do so for a reason that is mentioned or modeled in the Bible. Here are the main purposes that are found in Scripture for fasting:
1) To strengthen our prayer life. (Ezra 8:23)
Fasting does not change whether God hears our prayers, but it can change our praying as we eliminate distractions and sharpen our focus on God.
2) To seek God’s guidance (Judges 20:26)
Fasting to seek God’s guidance isn’t done to change God’s mind. Rather it is done to help us be more receptive to His will and His guidance. It can give us clarity on what the Lord may be saying to us – to hear Him more clearly.
3) To express grief (1 Samuel 31:13)
Expressing grief is often a natural reason for fasting. People who are grieving often aren’t hungry and don’t feel like eating. A good example occurs in 2 Samuel 1:12, where David and his men “mourned and wept and fasted till evening.”
4) To seek deliverance or protection (2 Chronicles 20:3 – 4)
Seeking deliverance from enemies or strength in spiritual warfare is a good reason for fasting. In the Bible this type of fast is usually carried out with other believers.
5) To express repentance and a return to God (1 Samuel 7:6)
This type of fasting helps us to express grief over our sins and shows our seriousness about returning to the path of godly obedience. Sometimes I feel as if my repentance isn’t yet complete or final. The Holy Spirit convicts me, and the fasting helps strengthen my determination to turn from my sin and turn toward His righteousness.
6) To humble oneself before God (1 Kings 21:27 – 29)
Fasting itself is not humility before God, but it can be an expression of humility.
7) To express concern for the work of God (Nehemiah 1:3 – 4)
As with Nehemiah, fasting can be a tangible sign of our concern over a particular work God is doing.
😎 To minister to the needs of others (Isaiah 58:3 – 7)
We can use time we’d normally spend eating to fast and minister to others during our fast. An example would be skipping a meal in order to have time to serve others in some way.
9) To overcome temptation and dedicate yourself to God (Matthew 4:1 – 11)
Fasting can help us focus when we are struggling with particular temptations. Fasting is a good way to say no to the devil!
10) To express love and worship for God (Luke 2:37)
Fasting can demonstrate our love for the Lord and deepen it.
If God is indeed calling you to a fast, there are some things you should do to prepare yourself. They are how you should equip yourself to “declare a holy fast” that will honor and please God.
A) Pray and confess your sins
A necessary step before fasting is to humble yourself before God (Psalm 35:13) and confess your sins (1 Samuel 7:6). Prayer should be our sustenance throughout the fast, but it is imperative we begin the fast with a contrite heart.
B) Turn to Scripture
Spend additional time meditating on God’s Word, before and during the fast.
C) Keep it secret
Fasting is unbiblical and even spiritually harmful when we do it to show off our spirituality (Matthew 6:16 – 18) or when we focus more on our own fasting than on the clear needs of others (Isaiah 58:1 – 11). Don’t boast about your fast; tell people you won’t be eating only if necessary. Fasting should also not be done when imposed for false motives (1 Samuel 14:24-30).
D) Prepare your body
Fasting, especially for days or weeks, can have unexpected and even detrimental effects on your health. There is no Biblical basis for harming yourself to complete a fast. It’s a good idea to check with your doctor before starting any fasting to make sure you can fast in a healthy manner. Anyone who undertakes a God-honoring fast should expect to survive and remain healthy. Supernatural powers will make it so.
So there you have it. As Christ-followers, fasting is a wonderful spiritual discipline. But don’t be a fool, and don’t damage your witness for Christ by harming yourself or even killing yourself with your fast. That would NEVER be of God, nor would it ever honor and please Him. ☺️

02/16/2023

This is probably more of a dilemma in the most developed countries, but it has applications for all pastors everywhere. This link is to a news article discussing the fact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now “write a sermon.” Virtual assistants like Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft), or Siri (Apple) would be capable of “preaching a sermon.” Technology has evolved to the point that a computer can write what a human might write.

https://apnews.com/article/technology-artificial-intelligence-kentucky-religion-65822bf1c46de7630d3441e9ff4ff41a

Computers are being used to write news articles, stories, white papers, and even books. It’s said that humans cannot tell the difference. It isn’t obvious that a computer wrote it. Now the technology has moved into the religious realm and can reference Scripture, address any topic, and produce any religious themed document. This will no doubt lead to some very robust sermons being written that pastors will preach.

However, the Biblical principle here remains the same. For many years now we’ve had web sites like Sermons.com and others where you can purchase a sermon and download it for your own use. Some of the sites even give the sermons away for free. In most cases, these sermons were written and preached by someone who thought they were good enough to be shared online. This seems all fine and good – but this is not where pastors should be getting their regular sermons.

Men and women who are called by God to plant and lead Christian churches have a divine calling. This calling puts you in the position of a Biblical prophet – one who speaks for the Lord. Rather the Lord speaks through you. (He doesn’t need anyone to speak for Him!) So it is quite wrong to preach something that someone else has – or that a computer has written. Instead you should be preaching a divinely anointed and ordained Word from God Himself.

When I preach, I start with prayer. “Lord, you have given me this opportunity to preach to these people. What do you want me to say? Please quiet my mind and my heart, so that You can speak through me.” That is my prayer. It should be your prayer as well, every single time you preach.

Pastors should only preach a sermon bathed in prayer, led by the Holy Spirit, with God speaking through you. But you don’t have to take my word for it. John Piper is a former pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, Chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary, and author of dozens of books. Piper has written about this. Here are some things I’ve learned from John Piper about a pastor using a sermon he or she didn’t write themselves:

Preaching is not just something we thought was a neat thing to do. And it is warranted by the very nature, of God’s truth. Right after describing the inspiration and usefulness of all the Scripture in 2 Timothy 3, Paul says, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:1–2). So it is right there in the context of the usefulness of the word in the life of the church. And the Greek word used for “preach” is not the same as “teach.” It is a word for heralding and exulting in the thing spoken.

Preaching is “expository” in the sense that there is always truth and explanation in it, and “exultation” in the sense that the preacher is never indifferent to what he is explaining. He is exulting over it. He is glorying in it. He worships through it and in it. So preaching is not the same as teaching, even though there are elements of explanation and teaching in it. (Were you called to be a preacher – or a teacher?)

The context in 2 Timothy is the church, not just street corner evangelism where you might imagine lifting up your voice and heralding, but in the church week in and week out. So, at the very heart of preaching is seeing the beauty of truth and feeling the value of truth. Preaching is a heralding of the beauty the preacher has seen and felt himself. You preach what has moved you personally.

Now that means that preaching a secondhand sermon exposes your failure to see the beauty of God’s truth and feel the value of God’s truth. You’re having to go to someone else to see what you yourself ought to see in the Word. You are having to go to someone else to express the things that you ought to experience when you read God’s Word. This is a symptom of something gone deeply wrong with you as a preacher.

Preaching is the pastor’s calling. It’s his job. He is supposed to spend whatever it takes to know the Scriptures and to make them plain for his people. As a pastor of a local church, your job is to read the Scriptures and understand the Scriptures specifically in relation to the needs of his flock.

I’ve seen this difference between a senior pastor and what I call a senior preacher. You are not called to be the senior preacher. You were called to lead, guard, and feel the sheep – God’s flock. As the shepherd, you are called to know and love your flock as you lead them. They will follow you because they know you love them, not because of what you preach.

Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.” Now that last phrase — “those who labor in preaching and teaching” — defines the calling of the preacher. This is YOUR work. You must labor in the study of the Scriptures until God reveals His Word for His people. And you joyfully share with the sheep what the Father has revealed to you.

First Timothy 3:2 says that an elder should be apt or able, gifted, to teach. In other words, it is not just our calling to study and preach the word. It is our gifting. And if it isn’t, the Bible says we should not be in this role!

If you have to preach a sermon written by someone (or something) else - then you don’t have the gift. Seeing, knowing, and sharing what God said, not what someone else says God said — that is the gift of preaching. Honestly, do you have that gift?

God is not calling pastors to be eloquent. He is not calling for the best preaching in the world. He is not calling for the most clever turn of phrase. He is not calling for the most relevant reference to the news or the media or some profound insight into the text that only somebody else can have.

What God is calling to every pastor is that every one of us be faithful, authentic in our encounter with the meaning of the text for the sake of our people, delivered with heartfelt passion for God and for the people.

People want their pastor to be their pastor. “See what is in the text for us, pastor. Love us with the word, pastor. Teach us what you have seen in the word, pastor. We don’t want your canned borrowings from other people. We want you to get on your face before the living God over his word. Plead with him. Wrestle with the text until you see what we need to hear from his word.”

I am very, very concerned about the use of someone or something else’s sermons. Using them is clearly wrong. Don’t do it. Let us all pray that God give the strongest conviction to pastors who are not preaching their own sermons. May he or she make the effort and set aside the time to pursue new life and fresh gifting with a sober sense of what God has really called them to do and be!

NEW YORK (AP) — Among sermon writers, there is fascination – and unease – over the fast-expanding abilities of artificial-intelligence chatbots .

02/12/2023

There's been a good bit of writing about the decline of the Christian church in America. Indeed fewer Americans today identify as Christians than at any time in history. This article provides the best analogy of what's going on and why that I've seen yet.
https://www.dallasnews.com/.../evangelicals-are.../

It would seem, based on what she's said in this article, that leadership is the issue. Churches need strong leaders of high moral integrity.

01/22/2023

This is a sad commentary. The U.S. suffers from a net loss of pastors every year - mostly because they become discouraged and leave the ministry. The most recent data available also indicates that the U.S. suffers from a net loss of churches every year.

How has U.S. culture lost its connection to the church? What could be done to reinvigorate church attendance in our culture?

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year – probably accelerated by Covid

01/16/2023

South Korea has become one of the world's biggest missionary-sending nations - only a couple of decades after it started deploying them - with more than 22,000 South Korean Christian missionaries working abroad, according to the Korean World Mission Association.

Driven by the zeal of the born-again Christians, Korean missionaries have become known for aggressively going to some of the hardest-to-evangelize corners of the world. They're going to places where converting to Christianity is illegal. They're going to places where even teaching about Jesus is illegal. Sometimes they even get deported for their efforts.

It's clear the South Korean missionaries take literally and seriously Jesus' call to "go and make disciples of all nations." God bless the South Korean Christian community!

01/01/2023

Starting a New Year is often a time of reflection, examination, with a hopeful resolve to do better. People make something called “New Year’s resolutions,” which are simply promises to themselves to exercise, eat better, lose weight, spend less, save more, volunteer more, attend church more regularly, read the Bible, and other noble charters.

The Lord expects this much of His people. In fact, it is to be a common practice throughout the year – and not just something we do once a year. God’s people are called to live examined lives. (Lamentations 3:40) We are to be taking regular times of reflection and examination, especially of our relationship with God. (1 Corinthians 11:27-31, 2 Corinthians 13:3-5)

Many people are ignorant of the importance of living an examined life. Living without thought – without reflection and self-examination, is one of the greatest errors that people can make in life. Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Jesus could have uttered the same words, possibly as an introduction to His parable about the rich man and Lazarus. If we intend to live for God, we must consider how we live.

In Jesus’ parable (Luke 16), the rich man simply goes about his day. It is easy to do. We busily engage in our work, families, recreation, school, and other activities. But all the while, we are distracted. None of these things are bad; in fact, they can be quite good. But we become distracted ever so subtly with the cares of the world. The immediate (or the urgent) takes priority over the important.

As Jesus tells the story, there mistake the rich man makes is that he loses everything – even his very life – because he fails to consider it. In other words, the rich man enjoys life, but ends up living for life. In other words his means become his end. He lives for himself without regard to his greater God-given purpose. And he doesn’t see it. Sin often makes us blind to our own foolishness. This is the plight of the rich man in Jesus’ parable. Could it be your plight or mine as well?

I have two (2) questions for you as you begin the New Year.

1.) Have you examined your life? Is that a spiritual discipline that you engage in regularly?

2.) How are you examining your life? What “benchmark” do you use to measure yourself against?

God calls us to obedience. God expects our obedience. (John 14:15-23. James 1:22) In fact, our whole purpose in life is simply to obey God. He tells us what to do. He tells us what not to do. And He expects our obedience. The Bible is not filled with suggestions or requests. Rather God has provided a very comprehensive set of commands.

When we fail to do what God has told us to do, or when we do what He has told us not to do, it is called sin. Examining our ways and testing them should reveal our sin to us. We should become aware of the sin in our life. You see sin is more important than we think it is. Sin is really utter and complete rebellion against God Himself.

Despite the fact that open rebellion against Him and His ways puts us on the wrong side of our relationship with God, it even has implications for us that are beyond doing what’s right or wrong.

The prophet Isaiah warned, “… Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.” – Isaiah 1:5 (ESV)

You see, rebelling against God and His standards affects our hearts and our minds. When we disobey Him, our thoughts and beliefs become twisted and misdirected. Our heart’s desires become unhealthy and perverse when we no longer follow (obey) God, who is the Creator of what is true and good and right.

When we are obediently following God, Jesus Christ lives within us. His Holy Spirit actually guides our thoughts and leads our hearts. We have the Mind of Christ, and we have the Heart of Christ running our lives.

But when we move into an open state of rebellion – knowing the good we ought to do and not doing it, and/or knowing the bad we shouldn’t do but doing it anyway – we deny the Christ that lives within us.

At the point a born-again Christian - a self-profession Christ follower - begins to deny Christ, our thinking will be flawed, and our hearts will be troubled. The longer we persist in this state of rebellion, the more flawed our thinking will be and the more troubled our hearts will be.

We’ll know no peace. Our relationships will all seem messy and unreconciled. Even the lives of those we love and lead (such as our children, spouse, etc.) will reflect this state of flawed thinking and troubled hearts.

The answer of course is repentance. Isaiah prompts us to recognize our human condition. Christ-followers are called to live examined lives. We are to be examining and testing our ways on a continual basis, identifying the sin and rebellion that may exist in our lives. When we discover some, we must move swiftly to correct it.

Reconciling a troubled relationship with God must be paramount in our lives. Truly nothing is more important. Identifying and turning from the ways He calls wicked – and turning toward the ways God calls righteous, are the next priority. Only then can we have a proper expectation of peace and prosperity with a sound mind and a warm heart.

12/19/2022

When we're teaching pastors in Africa, one of the things we must address are false religions. This includes cults, traditional tribal religions, witchcraft, and last - but not least - prosperity theology.

Prosperity theology is an evil American export to churches around the world. It claims that God wants you to be financially wealthy. It asks its followers to "sow seeds of faith," by giving money to the preachers - who become fabulously wealthy.

This half hour documentary is the best piece I've seen on this false religion. If you're looking to understand the truth about this common religious practice, I highly recommend you watch this video. It's not really about mega churches, which in themselves are not evil. Rather it's about what can emanate from them when their success becomes deceptive.

Megachurches, Televangelists, and the Prosperity Gospel... those were things that I had never heard of before... until I stumbled across an infamous intervie...