Showers are great thinking places...Part 2

Ok so I was in the shower and "reverse living" sort of pops into my head. What does it look like to live in reverse? Something like this...When leaving your house, you exit via the back door and when coming home, you enter via the back door. When getting into your car to leave, you don't use the traditional method of entry, you enter the car through the passenger side, climb over the center console and buckle up in the driver's seat. When going through McDonald's drive through, you do so backwards (I've done this before and it makes for a real good laugh :O), rather than keeping credit cards, cash, business cards, drivers license in your wallet, you just fill your front pocket with these items...We could on and on. All of these things have one thing in common, they would all be incredibly inconvenient to do.

I've lived in my house for 8 years this month and I don't ever recall leaving or entering my home from the back door. Unless you count the time I had to break my back door glass to get in :). I never get in my truck via the passenger door. I've never entertained the idea of carrying all of my "wallet" items in my front pocket! Though I have gone through McDonald's drive through backwards, I don't do it all the time, just when I'm with the right group of people. You should try it sometime it's a huge laugh and nothing illegal about it :)

Here's my point....As a pastor, having been pastor of the same church now for nearly 9 years, we can easily descend into a methodology. We do it this way because that's the way we've always done it. When my wife and I became the pastors of Living Springs, we were just 25 years old and had never pastored before. The church was very small...8 people to be exact. It was basically a new church plant as we saw it. At the very least an extreme revitalization effort. The church had 8 core people and 102.00 in the bank. We had our work cut out for us! Through God's grace and years of perseverance, we're seeing the blessing of God on our church as never before in the history of Living Springs! Within our first year of ministry, the church now had $20k in the bank and was in the process of bargaining for land to build a new church on. The new church is built and ministry is expanding very nicely in our small corner of the world.

As of February of this year, God has totally shifted my way of thinking about "Church and Ministry". I realized that after 8 years of pastoring, I was stuck! Stuck in a mindset of ministry. This is the way we do it. This is the way we've done it for 8 years! But I couldn't give a reason of why. Why do I do it like this? Why does it have to be done this way? Why can't there be room for change? Thank God I'm now living in reverse in many areas of my life. As a church, we have reversed ministry in many areas. If a ministry isn't working, we cut it or find a new way of doing it. No need for dead limbs.

Sometimes leaving the house from the back door changes our perspective and many times a change of perspective is all we need to better see what God is trying to do in us and through our ministry!

Live in reverse once in a while! You'll love it!