Tools for Planting Faith Communities – Part 6 of 7

When God places His Spirit in us, it kindles in us a desire to be fruitful and serve God. This is the natural result of being redeemed. Many today are frustrated in their walk with Christ because they struggle to find their place in the church and the fruitfulness they desire. They seek for service instead of purpose. They look to unbiblical church and leadership structures to define their role in God's kingdom.

God has designed works for you to do (Ephesians 2:10). He has placed His Spirit in you to guide you to those works. Do you think He would have gone to all that trouble if He didn't intend to show you the works He designed for you to do?

Many fail to find their Ephesians 2:10 works because they fail to seek them in the way God designed.They fail to see what is in the way of finding them. Are you ready for some real hard truth? Here it goes. The only thing in the way of you finding your place in the church and your Ephesians 2:10 works is YOU!

Many today are tired of hearing about the wonderful plan God has for our lives but never being shown how to find that plan. We developed this next tool to help people find their Ephesians 2:10 works.

Finding God's wonderful plan for your life comes the same way everything else does. Through your loving surrender to God and your intentional pursuit of His design for our lives and churches. We cannot find God's plan outside His design. Give God another 50 days to show you the path to spiritual fruitfulness.

Download 50 Days to Spiritual Fruitfulness for free by clicking here.

Tools for Planting Faith Communities – Part 5 of 7

[1 Timothy 4:7 NASB] But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness...

This is the first step for a Christian on the path to living by God's design. We must discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness. I find that some Christians today are still living in bondage. They have never cleaned house and put on the armor of God. Instead they live with fear, bitterness, greed, lust, and pride. All of these rob them of the joy that God promises to us in Christ.

Everything you need to be free from your sin, shame and guilt has been provided for you in Christ. You must do what is necessary to apply His atonement to your life. You can choose to walk in these sinful behaviors and God will allow it. Removal of the effects of this is not automatic. The removal of the eternal punishment is automatic in Christ. Freedom requires us to be consecrated. Consecration requires discipline.

We have assembled a devotional called 50 Days to Spiritual Freedom. This tool was designed to help you put some basic spiritual disciplines into your life. It identifies root sins and behaviors that are hindering your joy and fruitfulness. This is a personal journey tool. It helps you to come before God in an organized way and focus you on breaking free from the harmful effects of sin and your past. I promise that if you give this a try, 50 days from now you will be walking in a new and spiritually invigorated way.

50 Days to Spiritual Freedom is available free by clicking here.

Tools for Planting Faith Communities – Part 4 of 7

The defining task for every Christian is a command given by Jesus to the disciples in Matthew 28:18-20. It is historically considered the primary task of the church. However, this command was not given to a organization. It was given to Christians. They were told to teach it to other Christians. We should have been taught to obey this command. For many Christians, the concept of making disciples is foreign or it is handed over to the clergy as their responsibility. In order to rediscover the church that God designed, we must rediscover how to make disciples and teach them to make disciples.

Do you know how to make disciples? Are you a disciple? Do you have a plan for making disciples and teaching them to make disciples? All of this is necessary to rediscover the church by God's design.

The concept of making disciples scares most Christians today. What a clever scheme by the devil - remove the training and equipping of disciple-making from the people and instead set up an ever increasingly ineffective structure to do the task. It is no wonder the church in America is dying. We have robbed God of His most effective evangelistic tool – YOU! Your testimony of grace and transformation is designed by God to declare His glory and reach others for Jesus. The trouble today is that so few are equipped to make disciples.

We have put together The Disciple-Makers Handbook to help equip you to be a disciple and make disciples. Remember this – we teach what we know but reproduce what we are. You will not be effective at making disciples unless you become a disciple. Jesus always starts with the foundation first and that is you.

You can download the book for free by clicking here.

Tools for Planting Faith Communities – Part 3 of 7

Being the Church – Planting Faith Communities in a Post-Modern World - This book is born out of reformation. The church that Christ started on the Day of Pentecost was a loosely structured organism that operated under the leadership of the Holy Spirit and manifested His power through the spiritual gifts of the disciples. By the time of the Protestant Reformation, the church was a strictly structured and ordered organization with a leadership structure that had little in common with the early church or the instruction of scripture. This present reformation is about returning to God's design. We must stop planting new organizations and return to building the organism. How can it be bad for Christ followers to live by God's design? How can it be bad for the church to order itself under the structure designed for it by God and instructed in scripture?

[John 5:19] Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

Jesus modelled for us the importance of following God's design. That is how He worked. This book is a big picture work. Consider it a fly over of God's biblical design for His children and His church. The theology I will discuss will likely challenge many of the current practices of the modern church. The theology is plain and simple yet controversial. It would not be controversial except that many who profess Christ are ruled more by the practices and traditions of their church than they are by scripture. It was this way when Christ walked the earth. See what He said about the religious leaders of His day.

[Mark 7:7-9] 'BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.' "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men." He was also saying to them, "You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition."

This book can be considered the “What to do” for the church by God's design. It takes you through the basics of understanding your Gospel, baptism, spiritual disciplines and gifts, consecration and gathering together. It is designed to help you get focused and moving together to serve the world in the Love of Jesus. A free Bible study is included in the Appendix to help you and others to explore together.

Click here for free ebook

Tools for Planting Faith Communities – Part 2 of 7

Disciple Driven Church – The Coming Reformation - This was my Phd. Dissertation that is now turned into a book. This was where I began to put into words the journey that had begun with a call from God to plant churches. Not to plant what I saw all around me in America. God called me to plant what I saw in the Bible. This book originally came out in 2009. It has been a long learning process to discover how the church by God's design is meant to operate today in America.

In the beginning of this book I outline how the American church is dying. This fact disturbed me greatly and it still does. The Jesus I know is awesome and I have dedicated my whole life to serving Him. How come others weren't getting what I had found? I looked back through history and pinpointed some moments where major changes took place in the church. Each of these brought us further from God's original design. The church has gone down the slippery slope of compromise and continues its slide.

This book outlines the corrupt practices that permeate American churches and modern American Christian culture. Look at this book as the “What not to do” guidebook for the church. This is the book that put feet to our journey. If you are discontent with the state of the modern church, you may find answers here. Remember as you read it that forsaking corruption is not enough. You must go further and do what is right. Many today in America speak out about the church but continue to partake in it. You cannot remove the yeast from the lump. You must start fresh. We will outline that in our next post.

The Disciple Driven Church – The Coming Reformation Ebook is available free at this link.

Click here for Free Book

Tools for Planting Faith Communities – Part 1 of 7

Sun Ministries now turns its focus to helping others plant faith communities. We sincerely believe that the local church is the hope of the world. In order for it to be that hope, it must be the local church that God designed. This means it must free itself from the harmful practices and structures that have infected the modern church. It must follow God's ways and not man's ways. This is a difficult thing to do in our modern times where most churches around us follow similar unbiblical patterns. Many people have great affection for their church, the people there, and the things that happen there. Our affection for God must overtake all of those things. Jesus said if you love Him you will obey Him. Obeying Him extends to how we operate as a church.

Today in America, nearly every expression of Christianity that surrounds us has adopted many of the same corrupt practices. What appears to be normal is accepted as right. In order for the church to operate by God's design we must go through a process of deconstruction and then rebuild only that which we find in scripture. The Bible contains a sufficient amount of instruction for how the church is to be organized, led and operate. We do not need to make up our own ways.

Over the last ten years we have developed a series of tools that are helpful for people that desire to live their Christian faith according to God's design. These tools will be outlined in this BLOG series. They will be presented in the order we see as necessary for you to engage in the Christian faith as God instructs us to in the Bible. We will start with outlining the history of the practices that have infected the church. We will call this the “What not to do.” We will follow that with instruction on being the church by God's design. Then a lesson in making disciples as instructed in Matthew 28:18-20, commonly called the Great Commission. We will continue with a focus on your own spiritual freedom and then how to become spiritually fruitful. At the end we will introduce you to our Podcast called The Resistance Radio Show. This tool helps you explore these topics more deeply.

All of the tools presented here are available free of charge. There is no denomination or organization to join. We are here to help you and unite you with others that are seeking to experience what they read in the Bible. Enjoy your journey.

Planting Faith Communities

As we've stated in the last few blog entries, Sun Ministries is focusing on what we've always wanted to do: make disciples and plant faith communities.  The Church@HydePark is the first faith community planted by Sun Ministries. We say planted because like a seed we will nurture it and help it grow. Modern Christianity in America is largely an institutional endeavor. The New Testament contains no instructions for establishing an institution over the church. It does contain ample instruction on how the church should be organized, led and operate. We are looking to help people discover the organic and mission oriented nature of the Christian faith as instructed in the Bible.

Sun Ministries supports the leadership and provides resources to stabilize and establish the local church. Then Sun Ministries releases the faith community to pastor the community by sharing the Gospel of Jesus and meeting the needs of those around them. Sun Ministries plays an ongoing leadership role by promoting unity through service among the local faith communities.

For many years we have referred to those supported by Sun Ministries as “Missionaries”. We did this because without a local faith community it was hard to put what we were doing into generally understood terms. We are no longer using this designation. The staff of Sun Ministries is simply spiritually gifted leaders who have dedicated their whole lives to the vision and mission of Sun Ministries. Our goal is to plant faith communities that operate on the basis of spiritual gifts under biblical leadership and function by God's design. In order to facilitate that we must start with spiritually gifted leaders who will equip people for the works of ministry. These leaders are the staff of Sun Ministries.