Click title to see sermon video, quotes, and transcript.

Click title to see sermon video, quotes, and transcript.

Click title to see sermon video, quotes, and transcript.

Why is 1 better than 1,000? It depends on the context and situation. In the context of money, $1,000 income seems better than $1, especially if you need that to pay rent, mortgage, or for food unless you are being paid to do something evil! In the context of friendship, 1,000 friends seems better than just 1, unless those are 1,000 enemies who are imposter friends!

For Christian pastors, they need to process the question in the context of a local church. Is it better to have 1 or 1,000 people attending and participating together? It seems 1,000 would be, but what if that’s a false premise to even begin asking from? What if Christian pastors are to think differently that 1 truly is better than any since it depends on what the 1 is, or rather, who the 1 is. To a Christian pastor, God is to always be the most important one they serve, receive instruction, and be guided by.

If not, then what or who does a Christian pastor follow in leading a local church among an area of people? It has been proven, even over the recent history of 100 years, that local churches and pastors can be misguided and misguiding to people. When pastors begin to make church life and their life about the numbers of attendees to a church service, they then misalign the tasks associated to pastoring and reveal their underlying motivations lack God and make themselves or others a god.

So, this question is not mean to compare pastors and people to God but rather provide distinction for Christian pastors to discern motivations, methods, message, and mission. The important distinction helps determine and decide what direction they will go in serving among local churches and areas. Christian pastors will be tempted and trained in all various ways (goods, bads, and uglies), and more often than not, Christian pastors are trained or intrinsically concerned for the numbers of people attending church services on a regular basis.

Attendance, in countless Christian pastors’ minds and memory, has a direct impact on them, their schedule, the church organization, income, and overall influence (i.e. more the better). Numbers then become ‘a’ or ‘the’ goal for Christian pastoral leadership and exponentially multiples into priority while sinking into the mind and motivations for Christian pastors, influencing conversations, counsel, teaching, preaching, visits, relationships, ‘ministry jobs,’ and any other pastoral tasks and opportunities.

Fox News published an opinion article entitled “Church as we know it is over. Here's what's next” (blog post photo credit via the link is Shawn Fortune) with the premise stated at the beginning:

Church, as we’ve known it for the past few generations, is over.

Every church you’ve ever attended, or that you drive by on your way to a Sunday sporting event, was built on a physical attendance model that is location-centric.

As a result, church leaders and pastors have spent time every week encouraging, inviting and pleading with people to come to a specific place at a specific time on Sundays. This approach has created church staffing models, systems and ministry strategies focused on improving attendance. It’s also why there is an annual Top 100 list of America’s most-attended churches.

But that way of doing church is dead.

Respectfully, no. Maybe the only thing that is dead are those that misconstrue God’s words and world for their own ends by their own means.

Pastors are called and trained to fight. The type of fight is different fight. This is not a physical fight though it includes the physical world. This is not a argumentative or quarreling fight though it includes arguments and courageous "holding fast" to truth and love. They are led to fight for and against something, rather, someone. The "noble task" Paul tells Timothy is difficult because the world is broken and the pastoring people is not easy. Therefore, this is a unique fight that Paul commands the young pastor Timothy to do, "Fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12)."

These are the pastoral tasks for trained up pastors. There are several interpretations on 'tasks' or what a pastor 'does'. Sometimes the tyranny of the urgent takes over and leads the way (such as life phase, time, money, other life pressures), but pastors are trainers, otherwise known as equippers or shepherds. Metaphorically and naturally, shepherds equip sheep to live by training them primarily to trust the one they are to listen to. While training them to listen and believe, they also guide them practically through specifics. Therefore, pastors are to train or equip people to believe in the chief shepherd of God the Son, Jesus the Christ, to live and follow him in real life.

These are the biblical qualifications for Christian pastors, trained up to desire and fulfill the task of pastoring. Therefore, we establish who God the Father, Son, and Spirit is. Then we learn what Christian means. Then we learn what it means to be a Christian pastor. Without the fundamentals, we will be fundamentally off and become fundamentally weird and wrong.

God calls and commands all people to trust and follow him, and then he specifically guides some of the Christian men to serve him as a pastor among areas and local churches. A Christian pastor is a man who serves God and others with a purpose and role to oversee and train people to entrust and live the entirety of their life following the God-man and Christ -- Jesus. He, Jesus, is the epicenter of God's revelation, God the Father's redemption, and God the Holy Spirit's transformation of people to trust and follow.

The late and widely known pastor and preacher, S.M. Lockridge (March 7, 1913 – April 4, 2000), preached the popular sermon entitled "That's My King" what seems to be a 1976 Detroit, Michigan sermon. From the hour long That's My King sermon, short 3-6 minute video snippets collate and showcase the passionate description of Jesus. The whole sermon is just as passionate and call to convictional living in trust to Christ that produces prayer, repentance, biblical-spiritual language, and love for one another.

Not all preachers will methodologically sound the same or sound 'intellectuall' but an inspirational preacher will be one humbled by God to herald or preach the truth and love of God to people regardless on the results or repentance. S.M. Lockridge challenges the audience to become passionate for Christ because of the truth of Christ.

I have been greatly impacted and inspired by people God has affected to live for him throughout history, like Adoniram Judson (August 9, 1788 – April 12, 1850). Adoniram Judson was an American who trusted in the gospel and was led to the country of Burma to share the gospel and God's word to those who needed to hear the gospel of Christ, where he then encountered the greatest hardships of life from the loss of family, falsely arrested by an outside intervening government, and a deep, dark depression that turned hopeful in the end.

Justin Taylor from The Gospel Coalition and Crossway interviews Lecrae and Trip Lee about their life stories and how that turned them to use their music talents to explain these great truths. The 49 minute interview contains a wide spectrum of content and categories starting with where both grew up, what kind of churches they grew up in, their personal lives, what they considered Christianity to be compared to now, rap music, and their music content doctrinally and socially.

God creates inspirational life stories for the world around to taste of his transformative work in people's hearts and lives. Traditionally, these are considered Christian testimonies, and a testimony is one confessing and testifying to the truth of God and their trust in him. We can find God working good in the world and anything good in the world is to be attributed to him and not humanity as God is the beginning and end of all goodness.

Meaning, he provides goodness in order for people to be redirected and end up trusting him as the source of all good, especially the good news of Christ Jesus -- the gospel. God works evil for his good, and the greatest and historical example of that is through the person and work of Jesus -- the epicenter of life, the world, scripture, and our life. Therefore, we are not good -- he is. These life stories have been inspired by and testify of this truth and love that works good in the world for all to hear, see, and taste of God and his goodness.

Pastor Scott Lehr teaches at Dallas Theological Seminary's annual week long Church Planter chapel series with a core topic of "Jesus is Stronger." Lehr provides the convictional core to any pastor servant-leading people in church planting, which is merely ensuring God's mission of making and training disciples of Christ in a local area to see people inspired by truth and love to make life, disciples, and churches all about Jesus." Typically pastoring to localize people around this mission involves difficulties common as well as uncommon to other work in life. We want pastors to be raised up and called to this heart and mission.

We look for song content for contexts to use for singing together, which is different than mere listening to a song for person reasons alike to entertainment. We found a few trusted resources so far, one being the Village Church from Flower Mound, TX, providing them for free use for others to use among their church community especially small gatherings, Bible studies, etc.

Remember, singing is one aspect of worship and not the definition to it.

www.thevillagechurch.net/resources/music/

In the 21st century, parents are increasingly confused on what to do with their kids, especially their future.

The confusion stems from a vortex of generational and social issues that pervade the United States, including those in Christianity, that produce parents and kids living without foundational truths and wisdom for real life. We are left watching and dealing with millions of people confused, clueless, careless, or a mix of these clawing at anything that seems helpful to their lives vs. living inspired by truth and love.

College is one of countless life issues parents and kids face throughout the last 100 years, mainly after WW2. College has become a degree machine and income producing lifestyle for administration, professors, and coaches while outside businesses and overall economy have tried using college as a direct and indirect way to narrow who to hire. Much of what college offers is the professionalized classroom version of what parents and earlier education was to have already trained in a kid throughout real life and any formal education that helped parents refine to accompany their life training.

Now kids are growing up without basic living, work, communication, and social skills with character just as absent. If college has become the solution to correct failed parenting, then we have truly erred. Overall, the experiment of training up kids to have a better life beyond college has proven unsuccessful and unhelpful by the millions. Businesses now are seeing students unsuitable to hire and the economy struggles with increasing financial debt. Relationships are being strained, people turn to immorality and hedonistic lifestyles and ultimately rejecting what is truthful and loving.

Now, anyone becoming parents have no foundational understanding of what a parent is to be let alone do or say to train up their kids. Kids are left to the governmental educational system to fund, feed, teach, counsel, and socialize them from pre-school to college (now going into graduate levels). We are outsourcing parenting and following counsel that says college is needed for life.

Is college evil? No. Is college always wrong? No. College is merely a decision that comes from wisdom. Parents merely need to train and prepare their kids, including providing sound, wise counsel for life which involves the subject of college. If not, parents are left learning from colleges on what to do with their students.

Dave Ramsey shares in both of the above videos from 2015 and 2018 radio video broadcast on some ways to find jobs. Fears, pressures, hopelessness, financial strains, market and economy craziness, and so on can drive anyone of us insane, sad, and depressed. Finding wisdom, more so from the 'fear of the Lord' (c.f. Proverbs 1:7), is better than finding a job but helps in finding a job.

1. Company: High Point Travel (since 1986)
2. Company Website(s): www.highpointgo.com; www.highpointsupplyco.com; www.highpointtravel.com
3. Job Location(s): Dallas, TX
4. Job Opening Link: www.highpointgo.com/jobs-c1fkh
5. Job Positions: Sales, Travel Coordinators, Travel Agents, Developers (primarily Filemaker)
6. Job Types: Seasonal, Part-time, Full-Time
7. Market: Travel (Coordinating travel needs for individuals an groups. Group include churches, organizations, etc.) Airfare, bus and van rentals, cruises, etc.
8. Application Timing: Throughout the year

Here's a recent job opening shared by a friend of ours now teaching with VIPKID. Details of pay, hours, qualifications, etc., are available through the VIPKID website. Teachers sign up and enter a fairly rigorous interview process in order to teach English online (i.e. from home) to Chinese students. Contact VIPKID directly through their website for more questions and information.

1. Company: VIPKID
2. Job Location: Online
3. Job Opening Link: t.vipkid.com.cn/?refereeId=4984666
4. Job Position: Teacher (Teach English to Chinese students)
5. Job Types: Independent contractor with 6 months intervals (as of 2017)
6. Pay: See website for hourly wage

Friends, we have a number of you that know of job openings or looking for jobs. We want to hear from you if you have knowledge of job openings or resource links that direct people to job openings. We are gathering a list and would like to add the link or any information that gives others directions on how to learn more about the job opening and ways to contact the employer. So, please submit below the helpful information for us to review and share.

Dallas Seminary's Dr. Bock interviews Steve Ramseur about the theology of work which informs and leads to living for the Lord in business or the workplace (i.e. the 9-5) as 'ministry.' Steve had been a bi-vocational pastor in Seattle for 5 years before transitioning "full time" to business. From this, Steve provides helpful insights for pastors to learn, preach, and train people to know that working for the Lord is not confined to helping during a Sunday service or "serving the church" in various capacities and that it includes working jobs throughout the week.