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Here’s another powerful video story from Grace Church in Eden Prarie, Minnesota. Way to live THE Cause!

Nena Harvath - Livin' the Cause from Troy Hillstrom on Vimeo.

What if? What if the Lake of Fire was just outside of Cleveland? What if people went there before they died and not after? What if we could get in a car and drive to Ohio to witness the suffering of the lost firsthand? What if everyone who hadn’t believed in Jesus by the age of thirty was cast into the Lake of Fire and there was no second chance after three decades on earth?

If this fictional scenario was factual reality then convincing every person on the planet under the age of thirty to believe in Jesus would become the greatest social justice movement in the history of the world. Churches would line up to throw resources behind this urgent and immediate cause. Christians would share the gospel to the younger generation with boldness, passion and urgency.

Well, the Lake of Fire is not just outside of Cleveland, but it is just on the other side of the border to this life. The Lake of Fire is not the immediate consequence for every thirty year old, but it is the wages for everyone who has ever sinned no matter what their age (Romans 6:23.) Every person on this planet is just one breath away from heaven or hell at every second of every day. In light of this brutal reality we must use our every breath to convince every one within our reach to believe in Jesus before it’s too late. We must embrace sharing the gospel with everyone as the greatest cause in human history.

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:11-15

1. “I’m too busy!” (Jesus had a packed ministry schedule but he made time to pray.)
2. “I don’t know how to do it right.” (How about just try talking to God like you would a friend?)
3. “It doesn’t work anyway.” (That’s not how Jesus or the early church treated it.)
4. “Prayer just changes us, not situations.” (Who told you that, the providence fairy? It changes both!)
5. “I don’t sound good when I pray.” (True prayer is a heart utterance, not a speech competition.)
6. “I’d rather read the Bible than pray.” (Without both it’s just a one way conversation.)
7. “God won’t take me seriously.” (Yeah, especially if you never talk to him. Start now!)
8. “It feels weird.” (So does the skin of a pineapple but it tastes great underneath.)
9. “People may mock me if they see me praying.” (Good! Persecution toughens you up! Matthew 5:11,12)
10.”I wouldn’t know where to begin.” (How about using the Lord’s prayer as a way to grease the tracks?)

Whether it be before thousands of teenagers at a Dare 2 Share conference or hundreds of people in a church I struggle and battle nerves when it comes to preaching the Word of God. When I tell people that many of them look surprised. Maybe because I preach with intensity and passion it comes off as fearlessness.

It’s not.

I remember the first time I preached my first sermon as a twelve year old Christian school student. I was so nervous that I literally shook the pulpit. My hands were locked onto the sides of the pulpit and they were quaking. There was a pencil on the lip of the pulpit where my Bible and notes were resting. It rattled back and forth so quickly that it sounded like I was working a maraca behind the way-too-big-for-me pulpit. I was sure that my nervousness was obvious to everyone. But those seasoned preachers who were rating my sermon wrote on my evaluation, “Way to preach with intensity! You were so intense that you were actually shaking the pulpit!” They mistook my nervousness for intensity. I knew at that point I was called to be a preacher.

Maybe that’s why I have always had a penchant for verses like 1 Corinthians 2:3, “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.”After all, if the great Apostle Paul struggled with nerves, then puny little Greg Stier could too…and so can you.

Over the last three decades plus of preaching here’s how I have learned to conquer my nerves instead of letting them paralyze me:

1. I let my nerves drive me to study harder.

There’s a great line in the movie Unforgiven when a one-armed deputy is asked why he always loads two guns. His answer was classic, “I don’t want to die for a lack of shooting.”

In the same way I don’t want to choke due to the lack of preparing. I allow my nerves to get me back to the Bible. I let what Jim Collins in his excellent book, Great by Choice, calls “Productive Paranoia” drive me to exegete the text, build a solid outline, insert powerful illustrations and close out with a clear call to action.

2. I let my nerves drive me to pray harder.

How did Paul conquer his nerves? Through prayer! In Ephesians 6:19 he emphasizes this essential component of overcoming fear, “Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel….”

Prayer is where we wrestle with our fears and pin them to the ground with the help of the Trinity. It sure seems like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane wrestled with what seemed like genuine, knee-rattling fear. But he caused it to tap out before the throne of God (although it was a sweaty, bloody cagematch!) Through the power of His Spirit in us we can do the same.

3. I let my nerves drive me to preach every sermon as if it were my last.

When describing his preaching style Richard Baxter, the great reformer from 500 years ago, said, “I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” That’s exactly the way I want to preach…because it could be my last sermon. I don’t want to stumble and stutter into the presence of God at the end of a bad sermon. I want to blast into the throneroom of the King of kings, veins in my neck popping and having an aneuryism after my last point, laying down that sermon outline before his feet as my final sacrifice of praise.

As a matter of fact I’m nervous right now as I type these words. Why? Because this weekend I’ll be preaching to almost 3,000 teenagers at a Dare 2 Share conference in Washington D.C. I’ve taken too long on this blog and I’ve got to get back to final preparations. There’s more work to do on my sermon notes. I need to go on a prayer walk so that I can pin my nerves to the ground. I need to get back at it.

But I’ll leave you with this final thought. I hope you thank God for your nerves as I do mine. These twitchy, sweat-inducing little friends drive us to our knees and to our study. They add adrenalin to our sermons and fire to our bellies. Without nerves we may think that it’s about us and our ability to communicate. With nerves we’re reminded to go back to the well of God’s presence for the power and unction we need to preach with impact.

Please pray for me and our preaching team this week in DC. Pray for power and impact. This business of preaching is serious business.

I want to leap ahead with giant strides but instead I fail forward more often than I would like to admit. God has a way of turning my swagger into a stagger again and again. His goal is not to destroy me but to remind me. He relentlessly jolts me with the reality that the race he has marked out for me will only be won if my eyes are riveted to His one and only Son. The writer of Hebrews reminds us all of this same raw truth in Hebrews 12:1-3,

“…let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

We fix our eyes on our Savior who is waiting at the It is finished line with his own skinned knees, bruised body and pierced hands. His body bruised from the beatings he took, his hands pierced from the crucifixion he endured and his knees skinned from the weight of the cross that pushed him down to the jagged pavement of the Via dolorosa (AKA “The Way of Suffering“).

Yes, it was the crucifixion that paid the penalty for us sinners but it was his skinned knees that demonstrated the pathway for us saints. Jesus ran his race toward Golgotha with a limp. He clawed his way forward and climbed his way up “the hill of the skull” with his own skull wrapped in a painful crown of thorns. I’m sure he got dizzy from the loss of blood and friends but he didn’t stop pushing forward until he took his place in our place on the cross.

Now he stands at the finish line cheering us on even as we stumble toward him. By his grace and through his Spirit we press forward until we trip across the tape into his outstretched arms. In that moment we’ll long to hear, “Well done my good and faithful servant” whispered in our ears by the Savior himself. If we want to hear those words then we need to follow his example now. We need to spend time in our own garden of Gethsemane getting prayed up. And then we need to get up, move forward and keep pressing on until our race is run, until the “it” he has called us to “is finished.”

If you feel like you’re just failing forward everyday then you are in good company. You are in the company of Christ himself.

Let’s play a word association game. When I use the word “evangelism” what comes to mind?

-A bullhorn?
-A “Repent” sign?
-A pointed index finger (resulting in a flipped up middle finger)?

Too often, too many of us have negative views of the word evangelism. Sadly, the 2,000 year old practice of evangelism has 2,000 years worth of baggage that comes with it (i.e. the inquisition, burning heretics at the stake, Jim Jones, etc.) In the early church the baggage was merely carry-on. But today, there is so much baggage associated with evangelism that we are forced to check it and tempted to chuck it.

But we shouldn’t. Jesus himself modeled the right brand of evangelism which was equal parts awkward and awesome, drenched both in love and boldness. He commissioned his disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel to everyone. The baton of that responsibility has been passed from generation of believers to generation of believers and it is now firmly in our hands. It’s our turn to run with it. But as we do we should do it with an eye toward changing people’s perspective of evangelism from manipulative and obnoxious to patient, powerful and persuasive.

Here are five reasons why we need to rebrand evangelism:

1. Evangelism literally means “to bring Good News.”

Christians are called to be the good news people not the bad news bears. When we evangelize we are to do it with a smile on our face and a twinkle in our eyes. It’s like getting the privilege of telling a friend that the Lotto ticket they had purchased was the big winner or sharing with a cancer-ridden family member that scientists have discovered the cure. Biblical evangelism reeks of breathless excitement and joy, not judgmental, frowny-faced coersion.

2. It has been typecast for “the professionals.”

Too often we think of Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Luis Palau and other evangelists as the most qualified Christians to do the work of evangelism. But the rebranding of evangelism begins when it moves from the professionals to the people. When the gospel begins to spread like a contagion is, not just when another evangelistic festival comes to town, but when the everyday Joes and Jolenes take the good news to their family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and classmates.

To rebrand evangelism we must put the work squarely in the hands of “the average Christian.” In the words of Jim Groen, “The first reformation took place when the word of God got into the hands of the common people. The second reformation will take place when the work of God gets into the hands of the common people.”

3. The gospel is ultimately a love story, not hate speech.

God kneels in the mud to breathe into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. The first thing Adam sees when he awakens is the smiling, muddy face of his Creator. God then performs surgery on Adam and transforms his rib into his bride. God got muddy and bloody to make Adam and Eve. Then humanity rebelled and broke God’s heart while severing the relationship. But Jesus, the lover of our souls, would not be disuaded. He got dirty again to come to this earth and be born in a food trough for smelly barn animals. He got bloody again, but this time it was his own blood, not Adam’s. Jesus died to restore the shattered relationship. This love story is one of romance (walking in the garden hand in hand in the cool of the day), break ups (getting expelled from the garden), sacrifice, surrender and, of course, the ultimate “and they lived happily ever after.”

The rebranding of evangelism needs to happen because too often Christians have communicated a “gospel” that is really no gospel at all (See Galatians 1:6-9.) It’s been more about what we are against than who is for us (Romans 8:31-38.) It’s been more about rules than the possibility of a restored relationship through faith in Jesus Christ (Titus 3:5.)

4. This generation is looking for meaning and Biblical evangelism provides it.

The goal of Biblical evangelism is to engage the lost, not enrage them. It is the process of sharing the good news, asking questions, listening deeply and making “a case for Christ” with humility and love. This is what the Apostle Paul was getting at when he wrote to his young protege’ in 2 Timothy 2:24-26, “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”In a way Paul was seeking to rebrand evangelism even in his day. He reminded Timothy that it wasn’t about winning an argument but wooing a soul to Christ.

5. There is a real need.

We must rebrand evangelism because we are living in a world in desperate need of Jesus and evangelism is the portal through which we share the person of Jesus with others. Whether it be the angst of “cutting” or the desperation of suicidal thoughts or the cul-de-sac of American greed the gospel provides the solution to the deepest needs of the human soul. We must do what it takes to reframe evangelism as good news in a bad world, as light in the midst of darkness, as peace in a world of chaos.

Rebranding the word “evangelism” does not start with a campaign or a commercial. It starts with you and me, lovingly, gently, relationally and relentlessly sharing the good news with those within our reach.

Let’s start rebranding today!

Two decades ago my former theology professor, Jonathan Smith, and I launched what would become Dare 2 Share Ministries. Although I was a church planter at the time I had the youth ministry itch. Having graduated from Colorado Christian University with a degree in youth ministry I wanted to do something to deeply impact teenagers across the nation. My dream was to do conferences across the nation that would train teenagers to share their faith. I thought I could do this while preaching and co-pastoring a church that was vibrant and growing.

I was wrong.

It took ten years for me to finally get the message from heavenly headquarters, but I finally got it. Soon after I resigned my post at Grace Church and focused exclusively on building and leading Dare 2 Share. The last ten years have been a time of explosive growth and tremendous trial for Dare 2 Share. Yes, we went from averaging a thousand attendees per event to well over four thousand but, no, it was not without a large helping of pain and suffering.

To be completely blunt, the last three years of economic stress almost took us down. As a ministry that is extremely dependent on God to provide through mostly large financial gifts our development efforts took massive hits starting in October of 2008. Over the next two years we had to do reduce our staff count (a horrifically painful process) to half the size. We were forced to cut every ministry program that was not absolutely necessary to accomplish the goal of energizing a generation to evangelize their world.

I honestly didn’t know if we were going to make it through this difficult stretch. Out of desperation prayer skyrocketed to the top of my priority list and I, along with our leaders at Dare 2 Share, began begging God for provision and wisdom. Again and again he provided…just in the nick of time.

Over the last 12 months or so we’ve seen a stabilization of our ministry (praise God!) and have experienced some much needed ministry momentum on several levels. As the dust of the financial crisis has settled I can now look back more clearly and begin to see what God was, not only doing through us, but in us. During this time he taught me some very valuable leadership lessons.

To add to this perspective last week the staff surprised me with a celebration of my twentieth year at the helm of Dare 2 Share. Today, I look back and ponder the most important leadership lessons God has taught me over the last two decades. I am honored to share them with you.

Leadership Lesson #1 Prayer must not be our last resort, but our first priority.

Embarrassingly I must admit that for the first seventeen years of Dare 2 Share I used prayer as a kind of holy water to sprinkle on my white board strategies. Sure I would pray, but not as if my life and ministry depended on it. Instead of utter desperation there was simply an uttered supplication at the beginning and/or end of our strategy meetings. It was my perfunctory petition that was delivered to the throneroom of God but it was not the passionate, persistent plea of a beggar who would not stop knocking on the door of heaven until it was opened. My knuckles did not start to bleed until late 2008. It was then I became a desperate man.

Oh how I wished I would have learned the lesson of passionate prayer twenty years ago! Oh how much time has been wasted on strategies that were good but not great because I had failed to lay hold of the mind of God through prayer!

I’m forty six years old as I type these words. I feel like for forty three years I’ve been throwing dirt clods at Satan. Only in the last three years have I discovered the bazooka in the closet called Prayer.

Say hello to my little friend.

Leadership Lesson #2: Whittle your mission down to one thing and obsessively focus on getting it done.

How easy it is to get a fat mission statement while running a lean budget, especially in the world of non profit ministries! Why? Because there’s so much good that needs to be done! But when we settle for the good we forfeit the great. Unknowingly, with no ill intent or malice, we had succumbed to that very trap at Dare 2 Share. Our mission had morphed from evangelism training to evangelism and discipleship training. Just four years ago our mission statement was, “training teenagers to know, live, share and own their faith.”

It was just three and a half years ago that the chairman of the Dare 2 Share board was skimming our one page strategic plan when he suddenly blurted, “We have four bull’s eyes and we only have one arrow!” I asked what he meant and he explained that a ministry our size could never tackle the huge goal of helping teenagers to know AND live AND share AND own their faith. He, with the complete backing of the board, told our leadership team to go back and reconstruct our mission statement around one of those four priorities.

The process took six full months and many painful discussions but, with God’s guidance, we were able to develop a mission statement that was our one thing, “mobilizing teenagers to relationally and relentlessly reach their generation for Christ.” This singular statement contains both our mission and our philosophy. It embodies what we want to do (mobilize teenagers for evangelism), how we want to do it (relationally and relentlessly) and why we exist.

The great evangelist, DL Moody said, “Give me a man who says ‘this one thing I do’ and not ‘those fifty things I dabble in.’” What’s true of men and women is also true of ministries and churches. We need to find the one thing God has called us to and obsessively do it for his glory and in his power.

3. Never underestimate the value of building the right team.

If it wasn’t for Debbie Bresina, our Executive VP of Ministry Advancement, and the teams she leads, I would be preaching to church crowds not arena crowds (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) If it wasn’t for Dave Teraberry, our VP of Operations and Administration, and the teams he leads, Dare 2 Share would be an organizational mess and not a finely tuned ministry. From our passionate Ministry Advocates to our highly skilled Data Integrity specialists to all of our excellent teams, God has blessed Dare 2 Share with people who love God, embrace our mission and have the skills to get their jobs done with excellence.

In our early years Dare 2 Share’s hiring process had to do with whether or not you had a pulse and were willing to work for pennies. We’ve finally graduated to nickels and dimes on a pay scale and our hiring process has intensified dramatically as well. We do background checks as if we were hiring for the CIA, competency checks as if we were hiring for NASA, theology checks as if were hiring for a seminary, integrity checks as if we were hiring for a church and work ethic checks as if we were hiring for a construction crew. The pay is not great but the benefits are out of this world (literally!)

And once you are a part of the Dare 2 Share team you join an exciting and demanding fraternity of fanatics. There are daily prayer times with your team and weekly chapel times with the entire staff. We have quarterly celebrations based on what God has done over the previous three months and take time to thank God along the way for all that he has done. But there is another kind of fuel that keeps everyone moving and motivated as well…the stories.

At Dare 2 share we are blessed with an almost constant stream of stories from teenagers who have witnessed God do something amazing in them and/or through them as a result of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Youth leaders from across the nation keep us going with powerful anecdotes of teens heroically sharing the good news with friends, family, classmates and teammates. In spite of the hardships that inevitably come as a result of working in a high stress, results-driven ministry like Dare 2 Share, the stories of changed lives become our “tackling fuel” to keep us charging hard toward the finish line.

The value of building the right team has been a hard fought one for me personally. I don’t think I realized early on how important “getting the right people on the bus” (in the words of Jim Collins) was to the vitality of a ministry like ours. I am still discovering the importance of keeping the right people on the bus by providing the most stimulating and rewarding work atmosphere possible. As God enables us to do this more and more I believe we will be more and more effective in the accomplishment of the mission he has given us.

These are three of the lessons God has taught me over the last twenty years of ministry. My prayer is that they may encourage you in whatever ministry you are involved with as we labor together for his greater glory.

1. “It’s the pastor’s job, not mine.” (According to Ephesians 4:11,12 his job is to equip you to do the work.)
2. “I don’t know what to say.” (There are plenty of resources out there to help you!)
3. “I just live the gospel with my life.” (Good, now open your mouth and declare the good news!)
4. “I’m waiting for the perfect timing.” (There’s no such thing!)
5. “I don’t have the gift of evangelism.” (Well, I don’t have the gift of mercy but I still should show mercy!)
6. “They could reject me.” (No, Jesus said they will reject you…at times anyway.”
7. “I have bad breath.” (Testamints!)
8. “I don’t know how to bring it up.” (How about just ask, “What are your spiritual beliefs?”)
9. “I’m terrified.” (So am I. So was Paul! Let’s ask God for boldness like he did! Ephesians 6:19)
10. “They may ask me a question I don’t have the answer to.” (You don’t have to know all the answers. You just need to introduce them to the One who does!)

“Look, I am coming soon!” Revelation 22:7

The Mayans predicted it. Conspiracy theorists have confirmed it. Hollywood even made a movie about it. Could the next twelve months culminate in the end of the world as we know it?

Think about it from the Christian perspective. We’ve never been closer to the technology necessary for every eye to see him as the Bible predicted in Revelation 1:7. There was no way technologically this could have happened one hundred years ago. But today it could be as simple as telling your iPhone, “Siri, record Jesus riding that cloud down from heaven and post it on Youtube.” (If she refuses then maybe she is the antichrist! Aha!!!)

But, on the more serious side, there are true signs of the times on a global scale from economic turmoil to military tensions to religious conflicts. The Eurozone has transformed into a financial roller coaster and the “Arab Spring” has been carried over into Winter. A crazy dictator died and now his unknown son rules the nuclear-enabled roost (AKA “North Korea”). All of this sounds like iron mixed with clay (Daniel 2:43) mixed with the plot from a Left Behind DVD to me.

So will 2012 be the year of Christ’s return?

Drumroll please…

I have no idea and neither do you. Jesus told his disciples in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”In the Greek this means, “It’s none of your beeswax” or something like that. Nobody knows the time of his return, not the Mayan’s camp or the Harold Camping.

So how should we as Christians respond to 2012? Here are three reminders:

1. Live every moment as if it were your last…because it could be.

From the time Jesus ascended into the clouds Christians have wondered if this could be the year that Jesus descends from them. And rightly so. The whole point of prophecy is to make us live with one eye toward the sky. Somebody once said, “Live like Christ died yesterday, rose again this morning and is coming back again tonight.” If we all did that then we would be ready no matter when Jesus decides to return.

2. Don’t drink the Koolaid.

There are too many Christians who make definitive declarations about issues that are, at best, a mystery. Don’t try to determine the month, day or year of Christ’s return. Why? Because only God knows! We should not be in the date picking business unless, like the prophet Amos, we pick actual dates for a living (Amos 7:14…okay, so he picked figs…close enough.) We have too much kingdom business to do to waste time trying to predict the unpredictable.

3. Get busy sharing the good news!

Right after Jesus told his disciples that trying to determine when his kingdom would come was none of their business he told them what was, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Until Jesus comes back we are to saturate our network of friends, neighbors, co-workers and family with the good news and then we are to reach outside of our social borders to reach anyone and everyone with the gospel! We are to do this with one eye on the clouds and one eye on the crowds that we are to reach before he returns. It is with this cross-eyed perspective that we are to live every moment of everyday.

Could 2012 be the year of Christ’s return? Yes! So let’s get busy!

Hmm. Let’s see…

“Satan” is only a word scramble away from “Santa.” And, come to think about it, they both have a fashion bent toward red and sport facial hair (one a goatee and the other a beard!) Yes! It’s all coming clear now! Elves and demons both have pointy Spock-like ears and they are pint-sized minions who do their master’s bidding. Satan/Santa both see us when we’re sleeping (creepy), know when we’re awake (scary) and they also know if we’ve been bad or good.

For goodness sake.

That’s where the crazy train stops. I know that some of my kookier brothers and sisters in Christ reading this right now want me to try to make a serious connection. But I can’t.

I can’t be too hard on Santa to be honest. Because the image of Santa today is a caricature of the real St. Nicholas, the 4th Century Saint and Bishop of Myra. St. Nicholas was revered as a dedicated and generous man of God. According to legend, “…a poor man had three daughters but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment, would have to become prostitutes. Hearing of the poor man’s plight, Nicholas decided to help him, but being too modest to help the man in public (or to save the man the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to his house under the cover of night and threw three purses (one for each daughter) filled with gold coins through the window opening into the man’s house.”

Suffice it to say St. Nicholas was a godly man who loved Jesus and loved others, especially children. The gifts we give during Christmas honor his generosity, but most of all, point to the one that he honored…Jesus Christ!

When you think of Santa think of St. Nicholas! Think of his love for Jesus and love of giving! Let Santa point you to Jesus, not to the mall, Rudolph, eggnog or presents. Let’s see him, not as what the rosy-cheeked fat man has morphed into over the last seven centuries, but as the servant of Jesus that he truly was before he gained weight.

As for Satan. He is a creeper…with or without the goatee.