connection Independent Assemblies
uniting ministries worldwide
small groups growing
Jan/Feb 2011 | Volume 2 Issue 5
calendar January
Interstate Fellowship Meeting Monday, January 10, 2011 Faith Fellowship Church Collinsville, OK Rev. Kelvin Limbocker (918) 371-2996
happy new year!
North Texas Fellowship Meeting Monday, January 24, 2011 Abundant Harvest Church Athens, Texas Rev. Pastor Marc Jones (903) 275-6897
February
Interstate Fellowship Meeting Monday, February 14, 2011 Living Faith Church Moore, OK Rev. Jimmy Milligan (405) 794-3161
March
Interstate Fellowship Meeting Monday, March 14, 2011 Life Community Church Ada, OK Rev. Mickey Keith (580) 427-6230 â–şFor more information about upcoming events visit our website at www.independentassemblies.org
www.independentassemblies.org 2 • connection
connection moving? January/February 2011
If you are planning on moving or just recently moved, please contact the offices of the Independent Assemblies so that we may update your contact information. Also, keep us up to date with your current email and phone number. We want to make sure you receive your copy of the Connection Magazine and all other Independent Assemblies updates.
Contents 2
Calendar
4
Building on a Firm Foundation
5
Member Focus
6
Rebuilding the Broken Body
8
Growing Small Groups
10
3 Essential Leadership Qualities
11
Board Members
Independent Assemblies PO Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821 (580) 310-0222
Independent Assemblies PO Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821 (580) 310-0222 Produced by Layers Media, Inc. www.layersmedia.com
connection • 3
by: Mindy Wood
Building on a Firm Foundation Jerry and Angie Edmon - Gloria and Irvin McCorkle
When the Lord directed Irvin and Gloria McCorkle to Coon Neck Community Church in Elgin, Texas they had only twelve people filling the pews. Today the church, renamed Family Worship Center, has flourished to seat five hundred people for worship. Over the years, God’s faithfulness to the McCorkles was always there. The McCorkles established the church in the unapologetic preaching of God’s Word and faith in the Lord’s promises as they carefully sought God’s direction and will. A year and a half after taking on the church, they started their first building project. Looking back, Pastor McCorkle is amazed the way the Lord carried him through that process during a time when he had no one with whom to counsel. “Every pastor needs a pastor and when I first started here the church was experiencing phenomenal growth. I felt I needed someone to counsel with but there was no one.” Twenty one years later, they’ve completed four more building projects. As he later built relationships with other pastors he also joined IA five years ago and in 2007 McCorkle passed on the vision to now senior pastors, Jerry and Angie Edmon. “Jerry Edmon is a dynamic preacher, an excellent minister. He has a personal prophetic ministry that is second to none and he’s an IA board member. He’s worked with me for 35 years, since he was a kid, and does most of the preaching now. I still oversee the building projects and minister from time to 4 • connection
time.” Being in the position of overseer has provided McCorkle with a bird’s eye view of the church and the spirit realm that fights against her. No longer working on in the trenches of FWC, he can see far and wide as he travels ministering to other churches. “I think the Church is lacking in some areas. We seem to think that we need to be politically correct. We’re afraid to let the Spirit of God move in our services for fear we’re going to offend someone. I had a judge call me one day and I told him about how God was moving on His people. He said he’d like to have lunch with me so we met at a nice restaurant and he said, ‘you know I understand what’s been happening in your services but I don’t know how to approach it. I’ve always tried to stay in the middle of the road.’ I said, ‘when was the last time anyone in the middle of the road had any effect on your life?’ He raised his hands and said, ‘Praise God!’ I think middle of the road Christianity is destructive.” Pastor Edmon continues the same vision of bringing God’s people together in atmosphere we they can encounter the Lord’s presence in worship, be fed from God’s Word and connect with other believers. They’re passionate about strengthening the family and providing believers with the tools they need to walk in their calling and further God’s kingdom. For more information about Pastor McCorkle and the Family Worship Center, visit him at www.fwcelgin.com.
by: Mindy Wood
As passionate followers of Christ Pastors Lee and Laurie Martin of Covenant Family Fellowship take His orders seriously, especially the Great Commission. As a “missions oriented” church they’re reaching out across the globe and across the street. Rather than using the more modernized methods of outreach, they’re sticking to the oldest method in the Bible as they go door to door compelling people “from the highways and byways.” Pastor Lee Martin reported that it’s more effective than people think. “Statistics show that 50% of people who don’t attend church said the number one reason they don’t attend is because nobody asked them. I think it’s the biblical method Jesus taught and I think it will always work.” They regularly go out into the community and invite people to church for services or a special event, pray for needs and share the gospel with them without compromise. “People don’t know they’re lost. We’ve found you have to tell them they’re lost before you can even try to get them saved and they’re not going to come to us asking questions. Truth of the matter is that the whole idea of the kingdom of light and darkness is that it’s a battle. If we’re going to win them we have to confront the darkness.” Pastor Martin said they’ve experienced very favorable response. Several families and individuals responded to the good old fashioned outreach efforts and now are members of the church. Their global outreach ministry spans more than 20 countries as they train up and send out small teams throughout the year on missions trips or commission those into their own ministry. Pastor Martin usually ministers in leadership training, speaking at seminaries, bible schools, or leadership conferences. As an adjunct professor for Clarion School of Ministry in Blackwell, Oklahoma and in Dallas, Texas at Christ for the Nations, he teaches biblical doctrine, relational leadership, and missions in the local church. Every six months he offers a
Dr. Lee Martin class for members of his church who want to some ministry training. “We give them opportunity to work on that. We meet for one weekend a month for nine months on Thursday and Friday night and Saturday morning. At the end of it they receive a certificate.” In Pastor Martin’s experience, it often isn’t the young who need training. “The median age for my students at CFNI is thirty, meaning half are under and half are over thirty. A lot of times they get started and realize that they need more education. They can’t answer questions and don’t know what to do next in their ministry. It’s one of the Church’s biggest needs today.” Pastor Martin credits IA for helping pastors realize their need for each other and foster a community for them to join arms and train each other in relationship. “The biggest part of my own development was Robert Johnson who who really took me in as a spiritual father and poured himself into me.” As to evangelism, he encourages everyone to do what they can. “You can reach out wherever you are. People are all around you but someone’s got to go to them.”
connection • 5
rebuilding
the broken
body by: Mindy Wood
Life hurts. God heals. It’s a familiar slogan to many people who have experienced God’s restoration healing but for those wounded saints whose pain comes from within church walls, often they don’t know where to turn. From false teachers and their movements to betrayal at the hands of those they trusted, many vow to never step across a church threshold. At Five Star Church, Pastors Russell and Tara Robinson are seeing these disillusioned and guarded saints restored to truth and wholeness. “Our vision is bring people out
the past and the hurt and into the full destiny, the full life God has for them. Most of ministry seems to be reaching those who’ve seen the fake and are looking for the reality. God brings them in to heal those hurts and see the reality of Who He is and the reality God has for them,” said Pastor Robinson. A couple who attended large ministries for thirty years carefully attended a service at FSC. “She’d been out of church three years and had watched some of the church scandals in the area. She was really guarded about what she’d let God do in her because
Twyla and Kerry Ruggles
july 11-13, 2011 6 • connection
she’d seen so much fake and so much that didn’t prove true. Four years later God has brought her out and into pastoral care ministry. God restored their marriage stronger than it’s ever been. They’re an amazing couple and it’s amazing to see what God’s done.” Pastor Robinson believes God is raising up these wounded for His will. “God is calling His remnant people who’ve been through this and survived. He’s calling them out of the fog they’ve been in and bringing them into the true life that he created them to walk in. The fullness of the five-fold ministry and the gifts of the Spirit that are real and don’t just happen at church but saturate every area of their lives like it did in Acts.” The prescription that Robinson believes would help prevent or limit error and abuse in ministries is the biblical structure for the church that Paul preached. “I don’t really think there’s anything biblical about an independent church without accountability and the fivefold ministry. We’re open prey for the enemy and we can’t flow out of anything if we’re not being covered and receiving impartation from those over us. Thank God for Pastor Mickey Keith and all those covering us in IA.” The church outreach ministry includes a lot of children from a nearby school where the Robinsons substituted last year, a bible study and marriage counseling. “I never dreamed I would do so much marriage counseling. God healed a couple’s marriage from an affair and
now they’re a family again. My wife leads a Tuesday night bible study on Joyce Meyer’s book, Battlefield of the Mind, and we have more people attend Tuesday night than any other service. About 50% of them are devout Catholics but the Lord is showing Himself so real to them. Our new church administrator was a Catholic who’d been coming for a year.” Pastor Robinson said that like the wounded adults, they also minister to children suffering from abuse and neglect. “We don’t have a lot of youth right now but a lot of kids coming in from really bad situations. Some of them are in broken homes and some where drugs are being sold. We have one little girl in tough home who is blind and has cerebral palsy. She never misses a service. Her mother told us she comes in and sings the songs and it totally changes the atmosphere. It’s little things like that. We don’t have anything big or showy but a lot of hands on loving people. Through that love they’re healed and restored, whatever age they are.” Additionally Pastor Robinson emails a daily devotional and is in the process of culminating the last five years of those into a book. From Tuesday night bible study to marriage counseling and an email devotional, their ministry has taken on it’s own form. “It’s expanded in ways I never dreamed. God’s been faithful to bring us those who needed the anointing and calling we have.”
2011
A Year for Unprecedented Opportunities
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g r o w i n g
Small Groups
In the same way that you have a unique fingerprint, so does your church. And so does your small-groups ministry. You may have “borrowed” a mission statement and principles from another church, but when you look under the hood, you’re not the same. You are unique. You’re made unique by the custom combination of passions, gifts, and abilities of your members. You’re made unique by your setting. You’re made unique by your history. It makes sense, right? You may not like who you are, your fingerprint. And you may even be trying to change who you are. You may want to be a whole different church, or a whole different ministry. But in order to do so, you still need to understand who you are and who you want to become—and then you can choose a smallgroups strategy that fits. That’s easier said than done, of course. So let’s talk about four keys to keep in mind. Clarify What Will Be a “Win” for Your Small-Groups Ministry What are you going to call success? If you want small groups to play a primary role in making disciples, it would be fair to ask, “What percentage of our members and attendees need to be involved in a group?” Another very good question would be, “What kinds of Christ followers do we want to produce?” “What would they be like?” And it’s also important to figure out where you group members will come from. “Do we want groups to be an entry point for nonmembers?” Or, “Will our groups be for our members and attendees only?” In other words, “Do you have to be a member to attend a group?” Identify Who You Are Serving The next step in the process is to set aside some time to think about who your real customer is (or will be). This is an important step that is often missed. Keep in mind that, in this case, a customer is not just the people who are already part of a small group. You’ll also need to think about the people who are not yet in a group. Their interests and needs will be a clue that will help you figure out what it may take to invite them to try a group.
Create a Plan Next, you’ll need to think about and then plan out the steps that will take your ministry to the “win” you’ve identified. For example, determining that you want 100 percent of your adults to be involved in a small group will require a series of steps in order to make that possible. Depending on the percentage of your adults that are unconnected, you may need to choose a strategy that can move slowly. If your ministry is growing and you have a lot of unconnected adults, you may need a strategy that will enable you to start a lot of new groups all at once. The key is to be very practical, bring in some nuts-and-bolts people, and really think through getting from where you are to where you want to be. Identify What Is Not Helping Another very important key is the tough job of determining if there are existing ministry steps that don’t lead to the “win” you’ve identified. In other words, if you want to get 100 percent of your adults in a small group, and if you’ve acknowledged that most adults will only give you two or three time slots a week—then you’re next job is to determine what to do with the current ministries that might actually be keeping people from committing to a small group. For example, if you’re committed to small groups as the primary way that discipleship happens but you’re still actively promoting a mid-week service as a next step, you may need to evaluate whether the adults in your congregation will give you two weeknights in addition to Sunday morning. Or, if you know that a group experience in a home is very different than an oncampus Sunday School class, then you need to think carefully about whether those are two ways of accomplishing the same thing. Next Steps This is a process that should be done with a team. Taking the time to thoughtfully work through these four keys will yield a customized strategy for your small-groups ministry, but doing so will take time and persistence. Write out a simple set of statements that reflect your new, clarified thinking—you ought to be able to fit everything on one page, or even a poster. Pull the page out any time you are talking about what to do next. connection • 9
3 Essential Leadership Qualities by: Greg Baker
Anyone who is in a position of leadership must be able to exhibit the following qualities in this article. From a parent to an employer to a politician, these leadership qualities are essential to being a good leader. Learn to Communicate Effectively A leader that cannot communicate his or her passion, plans, goals, or vision will invariably flop. Without the ability to convey your vision, desires, goals, or passion to those who are following your lead, you will lose them either to confusion, a competitor, or through frustration and even bitterness. Words are the most valuable tools in a leader’s toolbox. Words can motivate the languid one, encourage the dishearten one, strengthen the weary, bring hope out of darkness, establish relationships, give direction to the confused, bring understanding to the ignorant one, and promote ideas to everyone. A good leader has learned to wield words gracefully and effectively. This is not a skill that is intrinsic to our nature. It is one that needs to be learned. Learning how to solve misunderstanding, convey ideas correctly, mediate disputes, and endear people to your vision is something that is gained with time and experience. Find books on communication. Read them. Learn to communicate well. You Must Have a Vision No leader will ever be effective until he or she has a vision that has gripped his or her life. Why would anyone follow someone who does not really have an idea of where they are going? Leadership for the sake of power or position always produces tyranny. If your vision is merely power and control, you will produce rebellious followers. Parents,
10 • connection
pastors, employers, and politicians must beware that their leadership position is not one of control and power else they lose their right to lead. You must have a vision, a direction, a goal that your followers buy into. People follow people only when that person is going somewhere they believe in. As the leader, you must never lose sight of your vision. Some get enamored with the power that leadership affords, and where there was once a strong vision, the leader loses sight of it and is now a leader whose goal is merely to possess influence over others. This is fatal to a leader. You will lose your followers. A leader is not someone who gets behind his followers and pushes or drives them. He is no longer leading at that point. A leader says, “This is where I am going, if you want to go, come ahead! I’ll help you get there!” A good employer who is also a good leader has instilled in his employees a desire to be part of and grow with his company. He has instilled in them a desire to follow! You Must be Loyal to Your Followers This is vital. We all know that loyal followers are essential to a leader. But you gain that loyalty by first demonstrating loyalty to them. A strong leader is loyal to those who have chosen to follow him. Never dismiss your followers! Without followers, you would not be a leader. I pastor a church and one thing I will never abide is an outsider criticizing a church member. True or not, the church member deserves my loyalty. I would want them to give me the benefit of the doubt, so I give it to them. I defend each of them and I do not tolerate or indulge in criticism of them. I would hope they afford me the same courtesy, but it begins, always, at the top.
Executive Board Mickey Keith
President PO Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821 (580) 310-0222 mickey.keith@gmail.com www.life623.com
Dr. Ted Estes
Vice President PO Box 2248 Claremore, OK 74018 (918) 341-8344 pastorted@lifechangerchurch.com www.lifechangerchurch.com
Ken Anderson
Secretary/Treasurer PO Box 1120 Lexington, OK 73051 (405) 527-6030 kda@valornet.com www.libertygospelok.org
Robert Johnson
Director of World Missions PO Box 978 Blackwell, OK 74631 (580) 363-2734 roj@clarionmissions.org www.clarionmissions.org
Jerry Edmon
Regional Representatives Southeast Oklahoma District Rev. Billy Hunter Antlers, OK (580) 298-2740 Southwest Oklahoma District Rev. Donnie Miller Cyril, OK (580) 464-2224 (580) 512-3657 Northeast Oklahoma District Rev. Mac Blackwell Locust Grove, OK (918) 479-6057 Southeast Texas District Rev. Herb Hawthorne Baytown, TX (281) 723-2278 South Central Texas District Rev. Jerry Edmon Elgin, TX (512) 281-5316 Midwest Regional District Rev. Mark Maynard Granite City, IL (618) 931-4106 Arkansas District Rev. Charles Kendrick Alexander, AR (501) 303-0831
Board Member PO Box 862 Elgin, TX 78621 (512) 281-5316 Jedmon1234@aol.com www.fwcelgin.com
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www.independentassemblies.org
Independent Assemblies P.O. Box 1546 Ada, OK 74821