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Jesus All About Life :: How to Respond to Cheap Shots

September 26, 2009 by hayleyneal 28 Comments

Some people are more interested in paying out Christianity, airing their own opinions, making a mockery of the faith and of you than actually really wanting ot know the answers. The often deflect a healthy discussion about Christianity by offering cheap shots. And we need to be aware of: A fool [who] finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in airing his own opinions. (Prov. 18:2)

Sure they may feel passionate about their one-liner but may have nothing to back up the statement they made. Often these statements are sincere but often not. Don’t get me wrong honest questions deserve our best answers. If you don’t know the answers you can always offer to research and get back to them. But more often than not our friends throw us careless one-liner that can high jack the conversation.

Some examples of these one liners that can often derail conversations and make the Christian squirm are:

  • There is no proof of God
  • All Religions are basically the same
  • You shouldn’t force your views on me
  • You can’t trust the bible it is not reliable
  • God can’t really exist because their is so much evil and suffering in the world.

Here are five examples of responses that are questions to help you push your friend to back up their claim and to help you discern whether this is a cheap shot or a genuine question.

  • What do you mean by that?
  • How did you come to that conclusion?
  • Can you give me an example of that?
  • How do you know that?
  • Yeah, wow that is a valid point, can you slow down and tell me how you came to that conclusion?

We should be able require your challenger to back up the claim. Burden of proof should be on the person you makes the claim not on the target of the claim. Get them to back up the claim before you answer. Often they will answer with another general one liner.

Evangelism, Ideas, Tips, Training

The 12 Mistakes of Christmas… #1 Doing Little

September 4, 2009 by hayleyneal 1 Comment


There are some simple mistakes we make every year at Christmas and withoutashepherd hopes to draw attention to 12 things we could perhaps do better. This is not to critique traditions of ages past, or opportunity to pretend to share all the answers as if I have them all, but a series of posts to promote more thought into how  how our churches and us as individuals can capitalise on all the opportunities that Christmas brings for the gospel.


Picture 6

#1 Doing Little

It’s September… are you plans in motion for Christmas 2009?

You say, what plans… its just the same as last year: A Christmas Day Service.

If that is your response it’s time to rethink the things you do and their effectiveness in capturing the attention of your community at Christmas. Doing little or not making the most of Christmas should be a crime.

Christmas is an easy opportunity for the unchurched to venture to church. Christmas is also one of the easiest times of year to invite unchurched friends and family along to church. Make the most of this festive season!

People will only go to churches they are aware of. If you church is invisible people won’t venture into your church family this Christmas. People will go to a church where they have seen some advertising, heard about it word of mouth, or have a friend, colleague, acquaintance that goes there.

There are some people out there who also are not thinking about going to church this Christmas but are also not opposed to the idea. Do something to gage their interest? To maintain high awareness, a church needs to have a strong community presence during the strategically important Christmas season.

three quick ideas:

  • put on extra services
    carols; candlelight; family; choral; recital; christmas eve; christmas day; OR how about a blue christmas -  a service that seeks to honor the sadness that often comes with the Christmas season as people remember those missed and focus on the hope brought by the news that Christ is with us.
  • door-to-door invites to christmas services
    get some postcards made up and grab a team from your church to personally invite your community along to christmas services. This worship service will seek to honor the sadness that often comes with the Christmas season as we remember those we miss, acknowledge the pain we feel and realize that the darkness will not last–that Christ is with us.
  • host a christmas meal
     put on a FREE christmas lunch and open it up to people in your local community and church family. Its a great way to provide friendship and a tasty meal to those without family or friends to spend christmas with.

  • do publicity
    Start thinking about Church flyers, postcards, posters, signs to promote Christmas. Can you drop bundles of postcards/flyers off at local schools, community centres and get them distributed there? Individuals in your church family can use them to invite friends also.
  • pre-Christmas events
    Christmas Appeal or Toys n Tucker collection within your community… Fair Trade Markets with Christmas flyers ready to hand out; the famous Gingerbread event; as individuals host Christmas Drinks at your home for work collegues, neighbours and friends.
Church, Evangelism, Ideas, Jesus, Tips

Form Management

June 5, 2009 by hayleyneal 1 Comment

Do you have an event that needs entry forms?

A dinner people need to sign up and pay for?

Want an easy way for volunteers to sign up to help out with things?

CREATE A FORM @ WUFOO.

What is Wufoo? Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet.

Their HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

All the info is stored online for you to access, search and export into .csv or .xls formats. So very convenient if you need to manage volunteers for outreach week or entries into an art exhibition or sign up for fitness morning.

They also have templates you can just copy and adjust for your needs. Use it for your church weekend away rego etc…

Check out some of the forms we used for 125 Year Celebration Week:

Volunteer Form

I HEART Exhibition Entry Form

Fitness Morning Rego

Technology, Tips, Volunteers

Fair Trade Markets

June 5, 2009 by hayleyneal 0 Comments

CHECK PHOTOS OUT HERE

We run Fair Trade Markets reasobly regularly but they acted as the launch for our 125 year Anniversary Celebration week @ Church by the Bridge with a whole lot of other activity that normally doesn’t happen at these markets. This post and a few following will detail what events we ran to outreach to our community, how we did it, few handy hits, resources & rationale etc.

Fairtrade Markets

Fairtrade Markets we run out the front of the church building, with doors to church open wide for peopel to wander through. (People love looking a churches and curiosity gets the better of them – so let them in)

Before the day:

  1. Design a flyer to stick in the noticeboard out the front of church.
  2. Order products from Tribes & Nations.
  3. Once order has come in, write prices on little sticky labels and place on products.
  4. Order some groovy paper bags to put purchased items in. (google ‘paper bags’ heaps of shops come up – ring and get a good price)
  5. Get some espresso coffee cups from a catering store, milk, stirrers, and sugars.
  6. Ask people at church to bake cupcakes & to be dropped off on the morning of the markets day.

On the day:

  1. Set up market umbrellas, tables with black table cloth (stretch jersey knit fabric – cheap from spotlight, works really well).
  2. Display products out on the table, neatly.
  3. Play some music through CD player.
  4. Put church flyers in the paper bags, so people get the advertising when they make a purchase.
  5. Get coffee ready. (Airpots work a treat, keep coffee hot and look proffessional – get them from catering supplies stores like Reward Distrubution).
  6. Get people to hand out free coffee & cupcakes. “Want to try a sample of fair trade coffee?” “would you like a free cupcake?”

To pump this up for 125 Celebrations we also added a BBQ, had the  I Heart Kirribilli exhibition on in the hall, I heart Kirribilli Tshirts for sale, live music in the courtyard, free helium balloons, kids facepainting & showbags. Lots of activity and buzz that doesn’t require insane amounts of effort.

Little Effort?

Ask one person to head up each thing.

I asked Suzie to head up Fairtrade.
Chris to do BBQ.
Kids church to look after Kids fun.
Laura to get a friend to play music.
Alex to look after t-shirts.
Nicolie to work out the exhibition.

Hand resposibillity over to them, help them out, give them guidence where needed, and farm out to them people from church who have volunteered to help. This saves you from doing all the hard yards, empowers and equips the church to serve and ensures things get done – plus it creates opportunity for everyone to serve, at different capactities.

Community, Ideas, Tips

If I was a Community Pastor I would… #7 BE A FRIEND

May 21, 2009 by hayleyneal 1 Comment

Be a friend to those who are lonely… pop-in-and-say-hello ministry.

friends

friends

So many people in our society are ‘time poor’ and don’t sacrifice things to enable themselves to give time to people who are less fortunate than themselves or in need relationally. Don’t fall into this same trap as the world.

Its a sad result of our busy careerism, consumerism society that revolves around self. There are now a lot of ‘selves’ that are lonely.

The socially isolate is a huge demographic. Rich poor, young old, male female. So many face each day without any intimate or personal relational time.

Be brave and pop into the homes of people often.Kirribilli is home to housing commission and a few memebers of our congreations call it home. The more you pop over to their place the more your face gets known about the place too… But other than that goal in mind never be too busy to love people and care for the weak, vulnerable and down in society. The world may look them over but lets love them.

TIP: don’t eat before you got to elderly peoples home… they will often feed you cakes, biscuits or even a full cooked meal even if it is 2pm in the afternoon.

Community, Evangelism, Ideas, Jesus, People, Tips

If I was a Community Pastor I would… #6 PARTICIPATE

May 15, 2009 by hayleyneal 0 Comments

Be interested in the things that locals are putting on. Go to precinct meetings, pop along to the seniors lunch, the art festival, the markets, etc… Keep up to date with whats going on on Council Websites, Noticeboards.

So often Christians put on events and think they need them to do evangelism. Events are helpful for congregation memeber in their personal evangelism where by they can use the extra, fun, casual settings of these events to bring their friends under the sound of the gospel.  However, you can save yourself a lot of energy of planning if you go to events the commnunity is putting on.

Firstly, it shows your support of the community and your willingness to invest in it. (Often Key Players will be there or lonelier locals in attendance)

Secondly, you can kill so many birds with the one stone: meet locals, relational time with believers/nonbelievers alike… take people with you!

Thirdly, I think it says something that we invest in the community and turn up to their events. Why do we put up flyers around town and expect them to turn up at our things if we never turn up at there things. Relationships should be recipricol.

Community, Evangelism, Ideas, Tips

If I was a Community Pastor I would… #4 HANG ABOUT

May 13, 2009 by hayleyneal 1 Comment

Ensure there is time in your week to just hang about and be open for conversations. I know it is a luxury to be able to just hang about, and there are some weeks where that just won’t happen. But can I encourage you to try!

In my observation, when you leave the church doors open people will turn up. (This is I suppose more true for churches located in high people traffic areas). I think it would be great if churches could be open around lunchtime… allowing people to wander in, prayer, sit and if they want chat. The problem is the ability to give time to do that. No point opening up the church if you can’t be around. Relationships means time.

Every time I have been tidying up the church, doing some creative decorating, folding flyers, or setting things up for church early and have had the doors open to the building, people have come in. Many are tourists in my area but there are a number of locals who say “oh I have never wandered in before”.

How to have the awkward stranger walk into the building conversation:

  • When people walk through the doors, it is always good to greet them, I usually say “Hi, come on in”.
  • They then stand there sheepish not too sure if they are allowed to be in, so I will say “Feel free to wander about to take a look”. This often the icebreaker where they share how beautiful the building is.
  • Its good to follow up the beautiful building comment with a small fact about it: At the moment I have been saying – It actually turns 125 years old this year, we are doing lots of fun things in May to celebrate. But normally I will let them know some famous people on the brass plaques or turn them to see the Queens Emblem and let them know that the church is the Queens church. Maybe your church has WWI & WWII memorial you could direct people to, a founding member of your local community could have a plaque, an amazing stainglass window….
  • I then usually say “yeah I love this place, its a great church” and this will lead into them asking why and I share why it is good to be a part of a church family.
  • Sometimes building facts won’t come up – so I ask “are you around visiting the area”…

That isn’t your clear-cut guide to conversations with strangers – but hopefully it will help you if you find that sort of things scary or just not used to doing it. And make mistakes, you always learn what is better to say in conversations by giving it a go. Often it will be the same people who begin to wander in as they know you will be around to have a chat. Two of the local larakins, who I first met at one of our community lunches, pretty much turn up when I am doing things in the church and I think I now have the start of a good friendship with them.

So hang about at some point in your week… maybe you have something you can do as just sit about… If you got brochures to fold, admin emails to sift through, do it with the doors open.
Or why not find some people within your congrgations who may have a certain days off to make this their ministry to the community?

Church, Community, Evangelism, Ideas, People, Tips

If I was a Community Pastor I would… #2 LIVE LOCALLY

May 10, 2009 by hayleyneal 2 Comments

By live I mean LIVE. (by live I mean: shop, rent, get coffee, exercise, church, post, eat…)

This means sacrifice – either living in a area that isn’t “your natural” demographic, paying more to live in the area, renting instead of buying, buying smaller but in the area rather than have an study and live 30 minutes away.

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor. 9:22)

Personally, as a part-time pastor at my church I have to admit I don’t earn lots, enough, but not lots. At the beginning of the year I had to work out whether it was worth making the sacrifice to pay rent to live in the local community  or my church /parish boundaries or  move home with Mum and Dad and save a little cash but be 15 minute drive away?(for those who don’t know Kirribilli is up there as expensive places to live.) I went with the financial sacrifice, where 45% of my pay goes to rent. It means I live amongst those I long to be in relationship with, for the sake of loving them and for the sake of their salvation.  Is this a good stewardship of the money I receive? Good question and one I wrestle with. At the present moment I see it as a means of trusting in God’s generous and constant provision, it keeps me humble, and it provides means by which God can use me to walk through doors he is opening within Kirribilli.

Other than having your home in the community, buy from the community! Presents for mothers day, gifts for friends 30th’s, the milk, take-away dinner, stamps, newspaper (…etc) I all try to buy in my community. I even try to Have dinners out in the community with believing and non-believing friends. Have a coffee at the same cafe, at the same time every week or second week. People have routines and you can become a part of the fabric of what they see as their community.
To get or not to get a Fitness First membership has been the question I have asked myself all year… The dilemma is that there isn’t a Fitness First in walking distance to my house – it is  10 min drive up the road, its cheaper and you can use its sister gyms. However  I feel that the local gym – which does not have those sister gyms and is more expensive has a higher concentration of locals. Check out also, the outdoor group fitness sessions that personal trainers do in the area, go for a walk on the same route, same time everyday and go to the gyms/pools that are nearby and not in the neighbouring suburb – stay in your parish?!? I am starting Boot Camp in 1 week and using the same guys to run a group personal training session as an event for our church’s outreach for 125 year Celebrations.

I don’t share these thoughts to give you rules on how you ought to live, I am more than happy for you to go to fitness first but I want to share insights with you as an encouargement to get you questioning how you are making the most of the breath God has given you and using it to make his name known in your community.

Community, Ideas, Tips

If I was a Community Pastor…

May 8, 2009 by hayleyneal 6 Comments

If I was a Community Pastor I would:

  • Pray for my community.
  • Live in my community. (by live I mean: shop, rent, get coffee, exercise, church, post, eat…)
  • Get to know key players in my community.
  • Have time flexible to just to hang about and be open for conversations.
  • Have coffee with unbelieving locals, locally.
  • Be interested in the things that locals are putting on.
  • Be a friend to those who are lonely… pop-in-and-say-hello ministry.
  • Buy a four-door car to transport people in my community. (strange maybe, but it is almost a necessity)
  • Create opportunities to engage and build relationships with the community.
  • Provide opportunities for people to investigate Christianity & for faith to be put on the agenda.
  • Support local businesses and get to know them.
  • Say hello to strangers.
  • Research the area… learn to love demographics & statistics.
  • Get involved in community activities/meetings.
  • Use the marketing/design team to do good flyers/promotional material.
  • Stand out the front of church regularly with flyers.
  • Go gospeling.
Community, Evangelism, Ideas, Tips

Pursuing Conversations III

April 20, 2009 by hayleyneal 0 Comments

Conversations are what we do as human beings—we talk, we listen, and we exchange words with one another. Some of us tend to talk more, while others tend to listen more, but if you have any doubt that conversations virtually define our human experience, listen to these statistics.

The average person says between 13,000 and 20,000 words per day.  Men speak approximately 4.68 million words per year and 375 billion words in a lifetime.  And women speak approximately a trillion words in a lifetime.  That’s a lot of talking!

Despite the difference of a few hundred billion words between men and women spoken throughout life, the reality remains—we all know how to talk.

But…just because we are good at talking doesn’t mean we are good at conversation.

It’d be a mistake to think that because we’re inundated with words, that we will automatically excel in dialogue.

Just as someone who has excessive contact with water doesn’t (as a result) become an Olympic swimmer, so it is with conversations.  Becoming a skilled swimmer is determined by what someone actually does while they are in the water. It’s how they practice, how they strengthen their muscles, and how they treat their bodies.

Michael Phelps didn’t become the greatest swimmer in history by taking warm baths all the time. In fact, in his pursuit of winning an unprecedented eight gold medals in the 2008 Olympics, Phelps spent extraordinary amounts of time not only in the water, but diligently developing his swimming skills. In the 7 years leading up to the Olympics, he spent only 5 days out of the water! In addition, he ate between 10,000 and 12,000 calories per day to gain the energy he needed.  Oh how I wish I could eat that many calories and have a physique like his. Phelps didn’t accomplish something that no one else has ever done by simply having contact with water.

This same principle applies to how we use our words in conversations. We can’t simply be in contact with words and expect to become Olympic level conversationalists. This will only become a reality when we .

That’s essentially what conversational mavens do.

Conversational mavens are experts of dialogue who understand the power of words and are able to create, sustain, and catalyze substantial and meaningful conversations that affect people’s lives, even after the conversation is over.

Read the rest of the article here.

Evangelism, Tips
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