Peter Witkowski Discipleship

WJD – Moving Past WWJD

What Would Jesus Do? It’s a fine question as long as we remember one thing: We aren’t Jesus. Ok, I know most people know this, but we often forget it. We often see life as a maze and Jesus as our guide. Our thinking goes like this:

“Should I turn down the street marked anger or go left and walk down forgiveness lane? I Know I’ll ask Jesus. We’ll Jesus would forgive. Forgiveness lane it is!”

The problem with this thinking is that we cannot be Jesus. We cannot in our own strengthen reason ourselves to obedience by looking at what Jesus did. And we aren’t supposed to. As Jack Klumpenhower writes,

What a tyrant Jesus would be if he lived a perfect life and then as his main message, told us to be like him. What a setup for failure.”

Why Jesus Came

Thankfully, Jesus did not come to expand the law. He did not come to guilt trip a bunch ofbracelet kids into behaving well. “You got mad and threw your bat…Yeah, Jesus wouldn’t have done that. You stop that now.” No, Jesus came to live a perfect life for us. He came to do what we could not. He came to fulfill the law. He was baptized, he was tempted, and he perfectly obeyed God in all things so that he could become our substitute.

And here is the great news, the heart of the gospel, God the father is “well pleased” with his son. God accepts Jesus as our substitute. Everything Jesus has done honors, glorifies, and satisfies God the father, including Jesus’s death on the cross. By pleasing God, Jesus recues us from our sins. If we believe on him, Jesus gives us his righteousness and then takes our sin. He pays the full penalty for our sin. Because God is well pleased with Jesus, He is well pleased with every man woman, and child who repents of their sin and embrace Jesus.

How To Respond to Jesus’ Life

The point of Jesus’ life is not to guilt trip kids into cleaning up their rooms. The point of Jesus’ life is to call kids and everyone to repent on believe in Jesus. As our savior, Jesus is perfect. He is God. He is fully deserving of our trust. Let’s truth him!

Obviously the kid that trusts Jesus will want to follow and obey him. The child that loves his savior we want to be like him. He will, like the disciples, leave this world behind and seek after Jesus. He will stop lying, cheating, and fighting and start reading, praying, and serving. But there is a huge difference between the kid who obeys and the kid who loves. One is trying to impress from a heart of shame and guilt Jesus and feels oppressed. The other is seeking to follow Jesus from a heart of love and experiences joy.

So instead of challenging our kids to think about WWJD, let’s challenge them to think about WDJD (What Did Jesus Do). He live and then died to pay for our sins. When our kids struggle with lying, let’s direct them back to the cross. Instead of shaming them into being good, let’s call them to repent and trust the God who saves, the God who makes us all things new.

Are you ready to living by WJD?

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 Children's Ministry

3 Steps Towards Developing A Great Kids’ Ministry

3 steps to essential kids ministry blogI’ve talked with children’s workers all over the South. Regardless of the size of their church, we all have the same passion for reaching kids with the gospel. But to do so effectively, we must be prepared for the children we will interact with. We must create times, spaces, and lessons that facilitate the proclamation of Christ crucified. After 15 plus years in kids’ ministry, I have can point to three things that keep kids’ ministries thriving:

1. Get Organized: Whether we are teaching 3 kids or 300 hundred, we must be organized. We should plan activities and lesson in advance. Each teacher needs to know what their roll is and how to fulfill it. The teacher lecturing needs to have his lesson prepared, including analogies, stories, and activities to engage the kids. The teacher leading the craft needs to have all the supplies in the room before the kids arrive. And remember, our classes begin when the first child arrives and end when the last child leaves.  When we host lock-in at FBCE, we have the kids watch a movie both as they arrive and about 10 minutes before they leave. This way kids who arrive 30 minutes early and those who leave 45 minutes late have something to do.

2. Get Your Building Ready: One of the biggest turn off for new parents is dirty, old
facilities. If the paint is peeling off the ceiling, if there is a hole in the wall, or if the playground backs up to a blog lego manfreeway, parents aren’t going to trust you with their kids. I don’t care if your kids’ director is Charles Spurgeon. New families will not stay. You wouldn’t house a corvette in an old barn. Don’t put your kids, the future of your church, in a dark, dirty basement fit for child-molesters. I’m not saying you have to spend a million dollars on constructing an indoor playground to reach kids. But, you may need to spend some money here or there to clean things up, to make things healthy. To reach young families, we need facilities that look clean and that smell like Lysol.

3. Prioritizes Safety: Run background checks on all your workers; maintain worker to kid ratios; and, regularly sanitize your toys. But most of all keep your program orderly. If parent’s fear that their kid’s glasses will get broken when they attend your church, they won’t come. (I can speak from experience on this one.) I like to joke that as long as drop-off and pick-up look orderly, it doesn’t matter what you do the rest of the time. And while touch overstated, the sentiment is true. If parents sense that things are chaotic they will not leave their kids. Fight to keep things orderly and safe. Workers will buck you on safety issues and kids will not always like having to follow the rules. But the success of your kids’ ministry depends on you keeping everyone safe. Don’t give up!

Admittedly organization, good facilities, and safety doesn’t produce salvation. But they do open the door for gospel proclamation. If we don’t do these things, we limit our opportunities to minister to parents and to reach kids. And here is the sad thing. Parents and kids who find your church scary, don’t necessarily move on to the next church. They may simply just dropout because their relationships, their connections are to you and your church. Maximize your opportunities to reach the world for Christ. Get prepared to minister to the next generation!

What steps have you taken to reach faithfully reach the kids in your community?