Have you ever heard anyone issue the call to “Get Back to the Basics?”
Hans Hoffman once said, “You must eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” 
In the Apostle Peter’s first epistle, he wrote, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s grace.” The Apostle admonishes each of us as believers, to remember that we are to be managers of God’s grace. We are managers, stewards, and dispensers of God’s amazing grace. The Church must pour out God’s grace to a lost and dying world for lost people to ever know and grow in God’s grace.
To do so, frequently church leaders must return to the mirror of Biblical ministry! We must hold ourselves accountable to the mirror. What do we see in the mirror? As a church, or as a fellowship, what image have we become? What does ministry look like to us? Does that which appears look like that which God designed in the Book of Acts? Have we drifted as a ministry? Have the currents of complexity moved our moorings?
All of these questions and a thousand more continually challenge leaders for answers. Are our people maturing? Are the people of God growing? I know a lot of church leaders who would fare much better if their focus was not on décor and color schemes, floor plans or building footprints. They would be better off if their energies and monies were not spent on updating ministry spaces but rather they spent themselves and their resources on redesigning their church ministry for discipleship. The Church is all about one thing – positioning people to be transformed by God’s grace!
Leaders, your ministry should be process driven so that you fundamentally are leading people into spiritual growth and vitality. Spiritual growth is process and in that process, complexity is not welcome. Having a lot of programs and the consequent busyness is not a lifestyle that is welcome. The church that moves people is strategic in its process of moving people forward. Busyness produces weary, restless, and unmotivated people whereas a strategically process-oriented church is alive with energy and excitement. People that are engaged in the Jesus process are people who are robust with gospel joy!
At the Church Of Champions, our leadership teams are completely committed to remaining accountable to the clarity of truth found in the mirror of honest-hearted self-examination and we burn with ardent desire to follow the blueprint of process given to us by Jesus. We are committed to following His process of disciple-making.
The Apostle Paul spoke these telling words regarding mirrors, when he said, “Examine and test and evaluate your own selves to see whether you are holding to your faith and showing the proper fruits of it. Test and prove yourselves[not Christ]. Do you not yourselves realize and know [thoroughly by an ever-increasing experience] that Jesus Christ is in you — unless you are [counterfeits] disapproved on trial and rejected?” 2 Cor 13:5 AMP
What do you see in the mirror?
What you see in the mirror is designed to be an overcomer through the blood of Jesus and bring glory and honor to God through the process of personal discipleship. Be bold. Be strong. live large. Be a Disciple processed in God's grace!
