106 - Help your congregation ask better questions [Podcast]

Welcome to Season 3 of the Your Church Matters podcast. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing some thoughts I have recently been sharing with churches on the questions people bring to the worship gathering. The content itself is a recording of my message at Joplin Baptist Church, Joplin, TX on July 23, 2017.

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Questions people bring to the worship gathering (especially related to preaching/teaching)

Do I find it:

agreeable?
helpful?
relevant?
comforting?
convicting?
stylistically appealing?
believable?
truthful?

These questions tend to be self-centered (“Do I find it …“) rather than Body-centered. We are also less likely to find the message to be “truthful” if it does not meet the other criteria.

Better Questions

Am I prepared to:

discern truth when I hear it? (1 Corinthians 2:14 – “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.”)
hear from God? (Jesus: ears to hear – 7 times)
be an encouragement to the Body? (2 Sentences, 6 verses: Ephesians 4:11-16 – “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”)
do what God tells me to do? (James 1:22-25 – “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.”)
see God’s world through God’s eyes? (Jesus: God so loved the world … Love your neighbor as yourself)

How you can help me help others:

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