My takeaways from "Ignite" by Nelson Searcy

This is my fourth Searcy book to complete in the past four months: Activate, Launch, Fusion, and now Ignite.  His books are easy to read, chock full of practical advice and experience, and they read like I think.  I'm a sucker for his books now, I even pre-ordered this one before they stocked them at Amazon.

Searcy is a former pastor at Saddleback Church in California (where Rick Warren is Senior Pastor).  His experiences there combined with his practical church planting experiences in NYC create a powerful testimony to focus, vision, and staying intentional.

This book is no different, although everything from cover design to the "feel" of the book had a different feeling than the first three Searcy books I read.  Each one of those felt more like a planning manual, whereas Ignite came across as theory more often peppered with a few practical examples.

The power in all of Searcy's works are that he challenges you to localize and not copy verbatim.  The books gives great blueprints but each pastor must adapt the plans to fit a particular culture.

Key Takeaways:

• If your church is so great – you ought to regularly be bringing people you know that have no authentic community to come experience community in Christ.
• Evangelism is not a one-time event – sowing the seed wide and far is our job.  God is the one who gives the return and harvest.
• 1 out of 4 people will respond positively to a first invite to church.  3 out of 4 respond positively when asked just one more time!
• Stretch and release is a reality.  Big days force a sense of urgency followed by a recoup period of time, much like exercise.
• Easter is a big day – but we can open other opportunities throughout the year that are easy to invite people to and give them a reason to attend church on a specific day.
• The pastor sets the evangelistic temperature of the church through his personal passion for reaching the lost and unchurched.
• Only about 5% of Christians have the gift of direct one-on-one evangelism.  There must be a renewed emphasis on John 1:42 evangelism of people bringing others to the feet of Jesus.
• Churches often face growth barriers at the 65, 125, 250, 500, 1000 and 2500 size.
• Prayer and fasting are absolutely essential for a church to reach the unchurched.
• When your church begins to make progress for the Kingdom of God, that's when the devil will unleash his worst attacks.  Never give up.
• "God's Kingdom has never been and will never be built on a foundation of complacency"
• It is the Pastor's job to keep the church focused outward because the natural humanistic tendency is to slip to becoming increasingly inward focused.

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We continue our focus this week on Living Like You Were Dying at FBC @ 8:30 am and 10:45 am. Nickelback’s If Today Was Your Last Day again highlights the pervasive idea that we should realize just how precious and brief our time together is here on earth.

I can recall as a young adult that felt led to pursue a vocation in Christian ministry what a respected preacher said to me, “Don’t ever go to seminary, they’ll put out your fire!”

In retrospect I believe he was saying they would bore me to death!

As I reflect on the last four years of post-graduate study in theology I have come to understand a bit of what he was talking about.

I don’t think education itself is the problem. However, many are setup for failure because higher education is intrinsically esoteric.

Yes those are both 5 dollar words that I probably gained outside of the academy in my insatiable appetite for books. And yet therein lies the problem.

Concepts and words that are meant for a few are problematic for the seminarian that seeks to be missional. For a missionary’s primary task is to see that Jesus Christ is accessible to the given culture surrounding them.

Esoteric education becomes a subculture in and of itself that teaches lofty words and philosophies that are inaccessible to the everyman.

In my mind this serves only to create a further divide in the laity – clergy relationship. And it leads to what can be considered abuse (either in power or spiritual) by those that hold the knowledge power over others.

A recent post critiquing worship leader Chris Tomlin’s music illustrates proficiency in rhetoric and failure in humility, grace, and charity.

My hope is that those considering higher education and those that are involved in it will realize the danger behind the “ivory tower” and keep one foot solidly in reality while exploring their disciplines.

My personal prayer has always been to keep my passion, learn all I can from everyone I can, and apply the learning to my actual life as much as possible.