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NEW THIS MONTH!

• ChurchGrowth Factoids – The Impact of Christianity
• Three Recent Posts on “HighPower Thoughts”blog
• Four Principles of Confrontation
• FamilyFaces Church Directory Software
• Prepare-Enrich Marriage Seminars
• Five Ways to Keep your Preaching from Becoming Boring
• Book Review:  Putting Jesus in His Place

Factoids

Three Factoids about CHRISTIANITY for which to give Thanks!

1.  Population of Christianity

More than 2 billion people worldwide -- about one-third of the world's population -- claim allegiance to Christianity in the year 2000, according to researchers David Barrett and Todd Johnson.

(Towns, Elmer & Warren Bird. Into the Future. Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 2000, p. 222.)

2.  Weekend Worship Totals
According to the Barna Research Group, on a typical Sunday more than 75 million adults attend worship services at Christian churches. That is more than triple the number of adults who will tune in to football games on a typical Sunday during the regular season.

(Evangelical Press News Service, September 6,1998, quoted by Towns, Elmer & Warren Bird. Into the Future. Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 2000.)

3.  Worldwide Growth of Christianity
According to Missions Frontiers magazine...
worldwide, Christianity is growing at the rate of 90,000 new believers every day.

(Clegg, Tom & Warren Bird. Lost in America. GROUP: Loveland, CO, 2001, p. 26.)

These and other Factoids can be found at ChurchGrowth Factoids

HighPower THOUGHTS  Blog

WHAT I'M LEARNING RIGHT NOW in the areas of Ministry Coaching, Simple Church, Church Growth & Church Health

Recent Posts:

• LOCAL CHURCH COACHING CERTIFICATION
• This blog details the steps our church is going through to provide Coaching Certification through Bob Logan’s coaching organization for our entire congregation.
  
  
• CONFRONTATION: Speaking the Truth in Love
  • This blog covers the four principles of successfully confrontation, which is included in this month’s eNews.
    
    
• APPLYING SIMPLE CHURCH
  • This blog covers the four principles of Simple Church, and the steps our church has taken to apply Simple Church to our local congregation.

Check out the Blog here.

Coaching

Most relationships, especially those of a supervisory nature, require a time for confrontation.  This is a word that many people have a hard time identifying with.  The Scriptures use this phrase which is quite helpful:  “Speaking the Truth in Love” (Ephesians 4:15).  That is probably the best definition of confrontation one could ever find. 

But then the question arises, how do I speak the truth in love?  Wayne Cordeiro in his great book The Dream Releasers has some great guidance for confrontation, or speaking the truth in love.

Four Principles of Confrontation:

1. Confrontation must be based on relationship
2. Confront the error, not the one who erred
3. Aim for a win-win result
4. Assure the other person of their value

Let’s break that down: 
1.  Confrontation must be based on relationship. 

For FREE Ministry Tools for Coaching, check out this.

Software

Family Faces Photo Directory software

Click on www.HighPowerResources.com/Software to download your new Demo today.

Seminars

PREPARE-ENRICH GROWING TOGETHER SEMINAR

“Growing Together” is the large group couples seminar curriculum from the “Prepare – Enrich” people, Life Innovations.

We faced a common problem with growing churches – too many people getting married!  That’s not really a problem, but it does put a stress on the pastor’s counseling time.   We were scheduling individual counseling appointments with each couple, but it was getting very tough to schedule appointments and still allow time for the pastor to prepare sermons!  We have solved this problem by providing a group marriage preparation class called “Growing Together” based on some curriculum by Life Innovations.

This is a great seminar for couples which will equip every couple with new communication tools to improve their relationship.  By making use of the Prepare - Enrich Couple Inventories each couple receives a dynamic 'snapshot' of their current relationship, including strength and growth areas.  Throughout the Growing Together Couples Seminar each area of their relationship is explored and strengthened. 

There are six goals of the Growing Together Seminar.  In order to achieve these goals there are also six corresponding couple exercises designed to help couples improve their relationship skills. 

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Click on HighPowerResources.com/Seminars to learn about more HighPower Seminars

Sermons, Dramas, Bible Studies

Here is a great article by Larry Moyer of EvanTell on making your preaching interesting:

Five Ways to Keep Your Preaching from Becoming Boring

Dr. Larry Moyer President/CEO EvanTell, Inc.

A church wanted to increase its Sunday morning attendance.  They decided to try a new marketing idea.  The sign on the front lawn read, “Have trouble sleeping?  We have sermons – come hear one.”
No preacher would want that said of his sermons – here is one to sleep by.  I know of no preacher who steps into the pulpit and says, “I think I’ll be boring.”  The unfortunate truth, though, is that many are.  So how do we keep our preaching from becoming boring?
Let’s look at five ideas.  These won’t solve everything, but they will be a strong start in the right direction; plus, they are all interrelated.
 
Communicate, don’t just speak
Speaking is when the words of my mouth enter the openings of your ears. Communication is when what is understood in my mind is understood in yours.  Communicators are not boring.  Only speakers are boring.  I’ve never heard one person say, “He is such a boring communicator.”  That means everything we say has to be so understandable, so relevant, so applicable to life where our listeners are living that they are watching us instead of their watches.
That, in my opinion, is why preachers need to be expositors.  Our words may not be correct, meaningful, or penetrating; His Word promises to be so.  Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Your exposition of Scripture needs to be clear.  The passage you studied and tore apart, needs to be put back together before you enter the pulpit.  The pulpit is not the place to do your exegesis.  Our audiences are not impressed with how much Greek or Hebrew we know.  What they really want to know is how the passage we’ve studied relates to their lives.
 
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(Dr. Moyer is President and CEO of Evantell, Inc.  You are invited to peruse a breadth of free or affordable materials on the resources section of the Evantell website.)

Books

Putting Jesus in His Place, Ed Komoczeski  
This is a very readable, but thoroughly theological look at the deity of Christ.  It is the second book in a three book set which Ed is writing.  It, along with the other two in the series, are part of an extended theological answer to the recent attacks upon the deity of Christ by the likes of Daniel Brown and his DaVinci Code, and the slew of other like-minded books which have sprung up because of it.

The first volume in the series, Reinventing Jesus, provides the direct answers to the claims of the DaVinci Code.  This newest book does not refer to it directly.  Putting Jesus in His Place is a extensive theological treatise on the deity of Christ.  It uses the H.A.N.D.S acronym to take us through the book.  “HANDS” stands for
Honor
Attributes
Names
Deeds
Seat

Each of these are a reference to some unique aspect of who Jesus is.  The book is filled with Biblical references and quotations.