Peter Witkowski Discipleship

5 Ways To Pray For Your Church

Nothing in ministry happens by chance. God works. He builds his church. If we want to see our church grow, we must be humbly dependent on God. We must pray. Below, I our 5 great ways to pray for our church and ministries.

1. Pray For Unity:

Friends, unity is supernatural. Churches are made up of people like you and like me. old man prayingI.e, Churches are made up of sinners. This means that every day we worship together, we teach Sunday school, and lead a bible study there is an opportunity for conflict. “Did you see what she was wearing; why didn’t Bob talk to me; do you think is upset about my Facebook post; how dare you correct my child?” It’s easy to let these thoughts fester. It’s easy to get offended and then to have fights in the church. It’s easy to destroy God’s house from within. This is why so much of the new testament is focused on relationships, on loving one another. We have to work at it. Notice what Paul says in Philippians 1:27

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”

When the gospel takes hold of our lives it should produce unity and peace. Pray for God to work. Pray for God to give us humble hearts that are quick to ask for forgiveness and that are quick to defer to others. Pray for God to give us unity.

2. Pray For your Pastor and leaders:

Hebrews 13:18 says, “Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a good conscience, desiring to conduct ourselves honorably in all thing.” Paul regularly asked for prayer. We need to pray for our leaders’ holiness, for their relationships with their families and for them to have opportunity to reach the lost.

3. Pray for Wisdom:

Psalm 119:18 says, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” To fully understand the word of the God, we have to apply it to our lives. Sure, we can understand the Bible on our by going to school and getting a degree. We can know what it says. But we can’t live it out on our own. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. We can’t be changed by ourselves. Pray for God to open our eyes to his word. To fully understand it and to apply it, we need God’s help.

4. Pray For Salvation:

John 6:63 says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” If we want to see someone “get saved,” then we need to invite God to work. We can’t save anybody. I don’t care how cool your games were, how fun your lock-ins are, or how techy your service will be. We will save no one. Rather, we need to apply to the God from whom nothing is impossible.

5. Pray For God To Work:

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,” (Eph. 3:20). The reason I get stressed when kids’ ministry workers quit, when events flop, and when new programs take forever to launch is that I miss this truth. I often think it’s up to me. For a ministry to grow, I have to be smart, creative, and cool. But that’s not the case. God’s working. He can do way more than we expect. God is not a little idol in a closet somewhere. He is the ruler of the universe. He moves planets and starts. And he can do more than all our tiny brains could ever imagine. I can’t tell you how many times God has provided, blessed events, and grown new programs simply through prayer. Time and time again, God has gone ahead of my phone calls and has already begun drawing people to teach, lead and serve.  Let’s pray to the God of the universe. And then let’s expect him to work. 

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Should Kids Go To Funeral Homes?

Never had I cried so much. I felt a tinge of embarrassment, a touch of confusion, a Funeral Home Blogsmall amount of fear. As a eight-year-old boy, I hated being noticed by adults. A few years earlier, I had welcomed the arrival of my little sister. Thankfully, I was no longer be the “cute one” getting his cheeks pinched. Praise the Lord! And yet, I kept sobbing quietly at the of front of the church for all the world to see. I couldn’t help it. All I could see was my grandmother’s coffin. And so I cried.

Over the last few years, many parents have questioned the wisdom of exposing kids to funerals. Death is hard. Many adults struggle to grapple with it in a helpful, biblical manner. Can we expect kids to do any better? Consequently, some parents will not let their kids attend their own father’s funeral.

However, parents on the other side of the fence view death to be a normal part of nature. They want their kids to know all about it. Some even go so far as to have little junior slap some painted hand prints on his grandpa’s coffin.

As parents and as those who work with kids at church we need to develop a biblical position on death and funerals.  Should we hide death from our kids or should we encourage our kids to interact with death?  The Bible says: we should talk about death.  Let’s take a look.

The Bible On Death

Almost from the get go, the Bible discusses death (Gen. 2). It is everywhere in the scriptures. In the Old Testament, kids could be put to death for cursing their parents (Lev. 20:9). In the New Testament, Christ talks about fearing the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell (Matt. 10:28). 

The Bible talks discuss death not because it is a morbid book. It talks about death because this is our number one problem.  As Ecclesiastes 9:5 says, “For the living know that they will die.” Everyone including our kids know that death exists. And most everyone is scared of dying. All around us, people are seeking out vitamins, surgery, and even cryonics in an attempt to escape death. Thankfully though, the Bible has a real solution and much less complicated solution. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin are death but the gift of God is eternal life for everyone who believes.”

Kids At Funerals

The Bible exposes kids to death. And, we should not be afraid to introduce our kids to death. It is a part of our DNA.  But more importantly, it is part of our spiritual DNA. We are by nature children of wrath, children of death. And so are our kids. “For as in Adam all die” (I Cor. 15:22).  We shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Rather, we should encourage our kids to mourn the death of loved ones and their own spiritual state.  

Funeral kids 2By letting me attend my grandmother’s funeral, my parents helped to process death from a biblical perspective. I learned that trials of life could not be solved through pretending, new toys, or junk food. And as I mourned the death of my grandmother, I started to get why the world needed a savior. I started to get that we all need someone to save us from our tears. Revelation 21:4 was starting to become real.  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

By bringing our kids to funerals, we expose them the worst and the scariest aspects of being human. But, that isn’t all. Our story doesn’t end with grief, loss, and hopelessness. It goes on to tell of the savior who died and rose again, the savior who conquered death. By helping our kids wrestle with death, we get to expose them to the beauty of Christ. “In Christ all shall be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22).  Later on Paul sums up things nicely writing: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 15:56). By walking our kids through death, we get to show them the beauty of the gospel. As pastor and author Marty Machowski said, 

Knowing one day they would die would remind them to trust God for each and every day. 

 

A Quick Caution 

Before I end, I want to address those of you who passionately disagree with me, those who are determined to shield their kids from death for as long as possible. Let me encourage you to be careful. I can’t see into your heart, so this may not be you at all. Feel free to ignore what follows. But in my limited experience, parents who keep their kids from death often do so out of fear. The parents don’t know how to handle death. They think God unjust for taking a loved.  They aren’t sure of their salvation and tremble at the thought of being laid to rest one day. They avoid the subject of death with their kids because they don’t know handle it.  If this is you, I encourage you to sit down and talk through the scriptures with a trusted friend or pastor. The Bible offers you a lot of hope.

Though we all are prone to fearing death, no Christian needs to fear the coffin. God is the God of the living!  

He will swallow up death for all time, And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For the LORD has spoken – Isaiah 25:8.

 

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

The Top 5 Blogs of 2015

It’s hard to believe that 2015 is almost over. I greatly appreciate everyone’s support and the varied discussions that have occurred around the Peter Witkowski blog. I hope and prayer that my blog has been a blessing and an encouragement to your soul. I can’t wait for 2016! But until then, lets take a quick look back at the most influential blogs of 2016!

1. Five Habits That Kill Kids’ Ministries

kid toys freeKids’ Ministries can be created and ruined in the blink of an eye. In this blog post, I discussed the five most common and most dangerous mindsets that permeate our churches kids’ ministries.

 

 

2. Shelve The Elf

self the elf 2Many people love the Elf on the Shelf. Quite frankly, a ton more people read that little book every year than every visit this blog. But the question still remains: Should Christian parents use this book? Does it promote the gospel of grace or works righteousness elevated? And does the answer to those questions even matter? I look at all this in more!

 

 

3. It is Time to Hate the Duggars?

duggarsA lot has happened since this article was published. Josh has turned out to be an unabashed fraud and hypocrite. I pray all his suffering  causes him to repentant and change. But regardless of how he turns out, this blog still captures how we should view the Duggars and their family principles.

 

4. Don’t Murder the Elf

don't kills the elfThe “Shelve The Elf” post caused quite a stir across social media. To help clarify my point, I posted this quick follow up to the above blog. I don’t think that everyone who uses the tradition is evil or uses it as intended. But if you employee the elf as his/her creators intended then you a stepped away from biblical parenting.

5. Sunday School is Broken

Sunday School is brokenYou don’t have to visit many churches before you meet people trying to figure out why kids are leaving the church. In this post, I explore the very real possibility that our Sunday school and kids programs may be the reason why our kids decided to leave the church.