Call Instructions

For the call tomorrow night I want everybody to have a piece of paper to write on with a writing device at your service (basically just have a pen and paper) cause we're going to be covering some things that I want you guys to interact with. Hope to see you all on the call tomorrow at 9.

Please do your best to call in before 9 so that we can cut down on the static.

Thanks

Great Call Last Night!

I will be posting the message that Matt gave to us on this website within a day or so but I thought I would let you all know that we had 14 people on the actual call and we had one who called the playback number.

For those of you who are looking to get others involved in threemid I would encourage you to get them on the Playback number (218 339-3699 Access Code: 937-332#) sometime this week and let them listen. There is a feature where you can rewind or fast forward your whole way through the call and that is really neat.

Thanks for all your support! Lets light up the website with comments, questions, and ANSWERS (I want you guys to answer the questions of other members so we can get discussion going).

A Faith Built on a Foundation

That's the title for our call this week. If any of you guys have friends who are non-Christians or are questioning their faith in God you NEED to get them on this call! Guest speaker again and lets have over 15 on this week!

We are on Facebook!

Thanks to Jesse Fontaine we now have a "Threemid" facebook account. Click here to go to this site.

Thanks for all the comments

Thanks for all the comments guys! Something you guys can do is be a follower by clicking on the "follower" link on the right hand side of the page. When you do that you will be able to put your picture on your comments as well as your name.

Call to Discipleship Conference Call

Awesome job guys and we had 11 people on the call Sunday night for guest speaker Titus Byer which is outstanding! Titus did an excellent job in hitting five key points that are extremely helpful in discipling individuals (given at the bottom of this post). Here are the minutes from the call just in case any of you wanted to jot down some of the info that was given.

The setting was a warm summer day on the mountains of Galilee in the year of A.D. 37. Jesus had recently risen from the dead and was soon to make his ascension up into heaven. However, before He did he had a simple and powerful command for His followers and we pick this up in… Matthew 28:18-20 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

Jesus did not tell His followers to go out and build large churches. He did not tell them to go door to door calling. He did not even tell them to help others become Christians. He told His followers to make disciples in all the world.

Guys, in our brief few minutes that we have together, I want to share with you guys the vision that I have for Threemid and the vision that I believe God has for each of us on the line here tonight. Threemid is all about being centered on what we believe Jesus thought was most important in life and that is discipleship.

The word “disciple” is mentioned 272 times in the Bible with 270 of the references coming from the four gospels or the book of Acts. In comparison the word “Christian” appears just 3 times in the entire Old and New Testament combined.

Just as a guess, I’m assuming that some of you on the phone tonight have always been under the impression that helping others become Christians is the main role of being a follower of Jesus Christ. The only problem with that though is that there is a distinct difference between being a Christian and being a Disciple.

Example: Roughly 70% of all Americans consider themselves to be Christians. And if I were to do a poll downtown with some of the lower criminals of Cincinnati, it would be fair to say that a fair majority of them would believe in God and probably call themselves Christians. How many of you would agree though that a large majority of the people who call themselves Christians in the world are not really Christians at all? They merely maintain an identity for whatever selfish reasons them may have.

To most people, they define being a Christian as someone who: 1) Puts their faith in Jesus Christ 2) Asks Jesus to forgive them of their sin. This is all well in good but most of them miss the third and final step that is so crucial and it is 3) Making a commitment to walk with Jesus in a teacher/student relationship. A relationship that says I am absolutely committed to doing everything that my master Jesus wants me to do.

This third and final step is the heart of discipleship. Jesus modeled discipleship in two ways: 1) In his relationship with His heavenly Father and 2) In His relationship with His disciples. Jesus role modeled how we should act with our heavenly Father and He also role modeled how we should act with others.

Certainly Jesus preached to thousands of people in His lifetime but how many people did Jesus have in his “discipleship group?” That’s right – 12. However, Jesus also had an inner circle that was even closer to Him than the 12 and how many was that? The answer is 3 (Peter, James, and John).

Just think about that for a second! Jesus, the God of the universe, who most certainly could have worked with thousands of people, had he so desired, chose to instead work with a very select group of men. He chose to invest His time and energy into these three core men and most specifically Peter.

Why did He choose to do this? I believe He chose this method because He saw that in the long term this idea would have the most results.

I like a quote that one person mentioned in regard to business that I believe applies to our walk with other Christians. He said I would rather run with 7 people than drag 30 with me.

I believe that this is kind of the approach that Jesus chose to use with his discipleship tactics. He was very straightforward with his followers on what it meant to be a disciple when He said in…
Luke 9:23 “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” He was not constantly begging people to follow Him (e.g. the rich young ruler). He was loving, kind, and gracious but when it came right down to it He gave people the choice to be His disciple no matter what the cost or to reject Him.

So we have set the stage that discipleship is important and that it was the method that Jesus Himself used but what does it mean to disciple someone?

To answer this question, I want to bring in someone who has been doing an excellent job in discipling others up in Rock Lake Michigan. He is currently the assistant pastor to Blake Jones and I highly value his opinion and his ideas that he has for working with people. I like to introduce my brother Titus.

Titus’ Five Points on Discipleship

1 – You do not need to be highly trained
2 – No need to act different
3 – Realize that people have different schedules
4 – Be a real person
5 – Respect everyone as equal

Call tonight!

Tune in at 8:57 PM and don't miss the special call tonight on discipleship.

Call this week

Hey guys, the call this week is going to focus mainly on discipleship. You might remember that I mentioned in the opening "Powertalk" that the word "disciple" was used 271 times in the Bible while the word "Christian" was used only 3. In this call we are going to be giving you practical tips of ways in which you can help other people become Christians.

I'm having a guess speaker on the call this week who is doing some amazing things with discipleship and I want us to have a good number of people on the phone! Try to get at least one other person on the line with you.

Keep up the good work guys; you're all doing awesome!

Power Talk #2 (7/2/09)

Becoming a Strong Christian

Let me just say before starting that since these talks are so short and to the point, sometimes they may come across as being more harsh then they were intended to be. Some of you that are conscientious might have the tendency to beat yourself up after hearing this talk today because you feel there is no way to live up to the expectations presented. Let me encourage you though not to do that to yourself. Just let God speak to you if this talk applies to your life and if you are already doing what you feel God wants you to do then just use this talk to fuel your energy and passion for God.

In the church world, I have found that there are basically three types of people: 1) Non-Committed Members along for the ride 2) Committed Christians along for the ride 3) Strong Christians who lead by example

We could spend a great deal of time focusing on each of these three but for our “Power talk” tonight I want to direct our line of thinking to this third and final group – Christians who lead by example.

The reason for focusing on this third group tonight and not on the other two is because I want every one of you in Threemid to become an active member of this club. No there are no membership passes or tickets to get in but there are definite marks in your life that indicate whether or not you qualify to be in this third and final group.

Sad to say but if I were to take a poll of most Christians that I know of today, I would probably estimate that only 5-10% of all Christians fall into this category. For the most part I do not believe that people outside of this select group ever make a bold outlandish decision to never become a part of it but nevertheless they choose not to be by their mindset, words, and actions. They choose not to be a part of this group when they fail to do the consistent daily routines that are vital to becoming a “Strong Christian” member.

In these next few minutes that we have I want to share with you all some key characteristics that are absolutely needed in order for you to become a “successful” and “strong” Christian if you have not already joined the team. Are you ready? Alright, let’s get started.

Obviously, in order to become a “Strong Christian” you must first have a definite vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. This is absolutely imperative and there is no way around it. If you are constantly going week after week with only reading your Bible and praying 4 times a week or less, you are going to have an awful time in developing into this category simply because you are making yourself handicap by cutting yourself off from the very one who gives all strength. If church is optional and if obeying God’s basic commands are a real struggle for you than I believe I can safely say that any huge dreams or goals you may have as a Believer will be put on hold because your battle armor is too limited.

But assuming you are doing the basics to the best of your ability, here are three simple steps that need to be taken:

1) Radically transform your time with God from being a dread to a delight. If every time you pray and every time you read your Bible you are looking at the watch and dreading every minute of it, than chances are your relationship with God is very draining on you. If your mom or up-line is constantly having to check up on you to just make sure you are putting in your time with God, the chances are that you have very little enjoyment with Him and your view of being in a relationship with God is majorly out of focus.
You see most people view their connection with God on a performance model. Whether they admit it or not they mentally believe that in order to please God they must fulfill their daily time with Him and that if they fail to do so they think that God becomes angry and causes hard circumstances to come into their life as a result. This is not the God I serve! Certainly my God is a God who hates sin and wickedness, but my God also loves me and is desiring to spend time with me.
I’ll admit that I used to do the timing thing. My goal was to spend ½ hour in prayer and ½ in reading the Bible every day and if I fell short of that I would become discouraged. But really guys, how ridiculous is this?! Can you imagine me telling my girlfriend in the morning that “it is my goal to spend one hour a day talking to you and if I fall short of this goal it can only mean that I don’t truly love you.” How crazy is that? Yet so many times we do it with God! We do our best to fit Him in to our 15 minute time slots and after that we feel better.
If you’re ever going to be a successful “Strong Christian” you must master the art of a loving relationship with God. A relationship that becomes a part of the fabric of your being and is with you everywhere you go and not just in your little “devotional time slot.”
I love spending time with my girlfriend. It is not something that anybody forces me to do. Guys, if your relationship with God is a forced relationship, change it right here and now! Say God I’m sorry and purpose in your heart to develop a relationship with God that makes you long to spend time with Him.
A good way to start out is by hiding your watch/cell phone for a while and going on a walk with God somewhere in private. Read from the Psalms and spend some time telling God how much you love Him. Ask your up-line to give you tips on how you can do this.
2) Set yourself apart from the average Christians. What are average Christians? Average Christians are ones that read their Bible and pray every day, but never grow. Average Christians are the ones who spend 2 hours a day playing video games, 1 hour on the internet, 2 hours a day on sports, and 10 minutes a day in devotions. Average Christians have many different focuses in life and do not have a set plan for where they will be 5 years down the road spiritually. Average Christians show up to church unprepared mentally, are quick to criticize spiritual leaders in authority (pastors, church leaders) while doing nothing themselves. Average Christians always love the latest piece of gossip. Average Christians do not know how to talk to their friends about things of God in a normal conversation because it is too awkward for them. Average Christians are rarely dependable and must constantly be motivated to get things done.
There are so many other things that I could cover but the bottom line is that for you to really become a “Successful Christian” you must make a decision to do more than what the average Christian is doing. You must make a commitment to love reading the Bible, enjoy talking about God, and constantly be leading yourself to go beyond what you believe you are capable of achieving.
3) Transform your line of thinking. In order for you to become a truly strong and successful Christian, you must think differently than most people think. As New York Times Best-Selling Author John Maxwell says, “The greatest gap between successful and unsuccessful people is the thinking gap.” Average Christians think thoughts like “I could never witness because I’m too shy” or “I don’t know anybody to talk to” or “people will just laugh at me.” On the other hand, Strong Christians think thoughts like, “I know I’ll mess up but I’m going to try anyways” and “I may not know many people but I’m going to make an effort to broaden my circle of influence” and “I know people will laugh at me but I might as well do it along with them because I’m nothing special without God anyways.”
Look at the lives of people who have really made an impact for God and it will not take long for you to realize that they think on such a different level than most people who were their peers and accomplished little for God’s kingdom. Look at men in the Bible like Noah, Abraham, King David, and the Apostle Paul. All of these men were faced with countless negativity among their peers but because they had a higher mindset and chose to think on a different level than most of the people in their day they were able to accomplish incredible things for God.

To be a strong Christian, you must make a conscious choice to leave behind all the people in your life that are making it difficult for you to obtain this position. I’m not saying you do not associate with them or call them your friends. What I am saying though is that in order to break out of the status quo of average, you must choose to live your life above the average in your thoughts, actions, and everything that you do.
I close this “Power talk” tonight with the words of William Arthur Ward:

I will do more than belong – I will participate.
I will do more than care – I will help.
I will do more than believe – I will practice.
I will do more than be fair – I will be kind.
I will do more than forgive – I will forget.
I will do more than dream – I will work.
I will do more than teach – I will inspire.
I will do more than earn – I will enrich.
I will do more than give – I will serve.
I will do more than live – I will grow.
I will do more than suffer – I will triumph.
May God help each of us to live a life of significance for the things that are truly important in life.

Build momentum for the phone call this week!

Lets aim for each of us to have at least one other person on the line with us on Sunday night! Whether its your family, friends, or work partners just get them on and we'll take care of the rest.

Conference Call Minutes

If you want to listen to the replay of the call, use this number: (218)339-3699
Access Code: 937332#

In his recent book “The God delusion,” world renowned atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that there is no such thing as God. He states that God is something that is in one’s imagination – nothing more.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: he is jealous and proud of it; he is a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser…bully. – Richard Dawkins

Mark Twain, the author of Tom Sawyer, made the statement:

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. – Mark Twain

The man known as the Father of modern Psychology, Sigmund Freud, said:

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. – Sigmund Freud

The man who invented the light bulb, Thomas Edison, mentioned that:

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk (nonsense). – Thomas Edison

To most of you listening tonight, these quotes are probably against everything you believe and think. In your mind most of you probably believe that somewhere there is a god who does love and care for you. Others of you know that there is a God because you have seen him work in your life and you have seen how the Bible is without question the Word of God.

So I think I can say with certainty that the area in which the devil is going to trip most of you up spiritually is not in debating whether there is a god because most of you are already convinced that there is one. The devil is not stupid and he knows this. As a result, his strategy for most of you is not to make you a full-fledged atheist because he knows the chances of that are very slim.

Instead the devil has a vision for your life that I think is almost as dangerous as being an atheist itself. This vision is to get each of you to become useless Christians.

He wants to make you a weak, discouraged, and a fearful Believer to where you never have the guts to ever mention Christ and his message of salvation to your friends. He wants to get each of you so busy to where you spend more time on your own personal pleasures/desires than on the things of God. He knows that if he can get each Christian to idly sit by and never mention Jesus Christ to anyone that it will not be long before Christianity goes extinct.

British statesman and philosopher, Sir Edmund Burke hit the nail on the head when he said that “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Now, one of the reasons that I read those quotes in the opening was to give you all a better understanding as to how non-Christians are viewing Christianity. For the most part, non-Christians have seen the church as nothing more than a social click gathering and view many Christians as being hypocritical and self-righteous in their lifestyle.

After all, if Christians truly believed that all people go to heaven or hell, then why wouldn’t they be more passionate about bringing as many Christians as possible into heaven with them? If they truly believed everything that they taught, why wouldn’t more Christians be doing everything possible in their power to talk to their unsaved friends about God?

I give this simple illustration to many of the kids that I work with at the YMCA or Main Street. I ask them, “If I knew that there was a bomb that was about to go off in this room in 2:30 and I casually walked out at 2:10 without ever telling anyone, what kind of person do you think I would be?” And 10/10 they always say that I would be terrible. They couldn’t imagine someone being that cruel!

Guys, how much worse would it be if I knew that the world was going to end one day (which it will) and that every person who didn’t personally give their life to Jesus Christ would go to hell (which they will) and I went through this entire life or even the next year without ever personally leading one person to Jesus Christ and saving them from an eternity in destruction? I would be worse than scum and it would be the cruelest thing that I could ever imagine doing to my friends.

What about you all? Do you feel that you are okay with the amount of people you have witnessed to about God or is it something that you feel convicted about? If you are not sure how to answer that I want you to ask yourself three personal questions:

1) How many people in your lifetime have come to God as a direct result of your influence in their life?

2) How many of you have talked to one non-Christian in the last month about God?

3) How many of you are committed to doing whatever it takes to seeing as many people make it into heaven as possible?

These last couple months have been months that God has given me a renewed passion for winning more people to Christ. I confess that I haven’t done the best job at this but with God’s help I am making a commitment to make that change! I ask you all, who is with me?

Now I know what some of you are probably thinking. You’re thinking that all this sounds great and that you would love to talk to more people about God and get all your friends saved but you are asking yourself, how in the world am I going to ever lead another person to God? I’m not a preacher!

Greek philosopher Aristotle said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”

I want to give you three simple habits that have transformed my life and have unlocked any success that I may have had in leading any person to Christ and will hopefully be of help to each of you.

1) Be a rock solid Christian yourself

I go to Bible School and as sad as this is I believe that I can honestly say that close to 75% of the students that go to the school have their devotions 5 times a week or less. You will never be able to teach others to grow unless you are rock solid yourself.

2) Develop a balanced circle of friends

You need to have both Christian and non-Christian friends. The Christian friends need to be the ones you take spiritual advice from and the non-Christian ones need to be there so that you can help them become Christians.

3) Look for opportunities to share God to others

There are always opportunities; you simply have to look for them. If you have a long bus ride to school, make it a priority to sit with a person you know who might be interested in God. Bring Christianity up randomly and do not be fearful. You need to come across to the people you are working with as enthusiastic and excited to be a Christian. They have seen far too many dull ones and don’t need to see any more.

Now, these three steps are all well and good if you can really put them into action. And my guess is that if you asked any ordinary church attendee, they would probably say these three steps are good. However, what most Christians do is they play mind games with themselves. They say things like “well, I need to get trained and educated in order to witness to people.” I need to know all there is to know about everything in Christianity before I witness to someone. Because after all, what if they ask a question that I don’t understand? I’ll look stupid and embarrass Christianity and they’ll never want to become Christians.

Guys this is why I believe that this group we are starting is so important. We need something that will help each of us to stay focused on what is really important in life.

In closing let me share with you all in a brief minute what our group Threemid is all about.

If you go on the threemid website, threemid.blogspot.com, you will find our purpose statement that basically sums up in one sentence the purpose Threemid. The purpose is to “build strong Christians who equip and help others equip 3 new Christians each year.”

The whole goal of Threemid is based on Matthew 28:19 when Jesus told his disciples to go out into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Let me make something clear. Threemid is not in the business of making just a bunch of Christians; we are in the business of making disciples. Do you know that in the entire Bible the name “Christian” only appears 3 times? The word “disciple” on the other hand is used 272 times.

What does being a disciple of Christ mean? It means more than just a simple belief in Jesus Christ. It means more than just coming to church on Sunday and reading your Bible.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is being in a teacher and student relationship with the one and only true God. And as a disciple, your goal is to learn to think and act just as Jesus thinks and acts.

And so the whole focus of Threemid is to help each of you to act and think like Jesus.

Jesus said to go out and make disciples and so that is what we intend to do. The way we do it is by 1) Helping each of you develop into strong Christians 2) Making you accountable to a strong Christian 3) Helping you find three people in the next year find Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

When you get these three people, it will be your responsibility to teach them the same things you have learned from God’s word, church, or Threemid itself. It will be your responsibility to contact your three members at least once to twice a week to make sure they are doing the things that are necessary to maintain a healthy relationship with God.