{"id":1968,"date":"2011-11-22T22:01:28","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T06:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2011\/11\/22\/its-a-people-business\/"},"modified":"2011-11-22T22:01:28","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T06:01:28","slug":"its-a-people-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2011\/11\/22\/its-a-people-business\/","title":{"rendered":"it’s a people business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saw an interesting political clip<\/a> on Breitbart the other day. It\u2019s TV host Chris Matthews complaining about Obama. I first ran into Matthews on TV when the Clinton scandals were active. He was quite antagonistic to Clinton, but he is a liberal Democrat politically and a Catholic, so I have big disagreements with him on a lot of issues. Still, he\u2019s a guy I like in spite of these disagreements.<\/p>\n

And of course, I was interested in this clip because the headline talks about Matthews going after Obama. I don\u2019t particularly like Obama\u2019s politics either.<\/p>\n

But take a look at the video, because I want to make a point about the ministry from something Matthews says about politics.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The big point Matthews is making is that politics is a people business. You have to talk to people, build relationships with people, spend time with people. His big complaint about Obama is that Obama is keeping his distance from the Congressmen of his own party.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how valid Matthews\u2019 complaint is against Obama, although it sounds true. But as I was thinking about it, I thought about our own ministry and how it is built and sometimes how it is hindered or torn down.<\/p>\n

The Christian ministry is a people business also, or maybe, \u2018moreso\u2019. Jesus said to Peter, \u201cFeed my sheep.\u201d He commissioned us to \u201cmake disciples\u201d.<\/p>\n

I have found that its really hard to make disciples by e-mail. You need to sit in coffee shops with them. You need to visit in their homes. You need to get involved in their lives.<\/p>\n

You need to find ways to do the same kinds of things to initiate evangelistic outreach. People to people contacts. Spending time.<\/p>\n

I love spending a lot of time with my interests, or even simply studying out passages for sermons or articles. Study time is important. But I\u2019ve found that people time is more important.<\/p>\n

And the e-mail counseling route often leads to disaster! You\u2019ve seen flame wars online, no doubt. Whew! Wait till someone in the church starts going to it with you by e-mail. I\u2019ve learned that it is crucial<\/em> to stop e-mail \u2018counseling\u2019 sessions before they can get too personal. You can use e-mail to set up appointments. You can use it to distribute encouragement or generic devotionals. But if you have an issue you need to discuss\u2026 don\u2019t do it online. Person to person \u2013 that\u2019s the ticket.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a people business.<\/p>\n

\"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saw an interesting political clip on Breitbart the other day. It\u2019s TV host Chris Matthews complaining about Obama. I first ran into Matthews on TV when the Clinton scandals were active. He was quite antagonistic to Clinton, but he is a liberal Democrat politically and a Catholic, so I have big disagreements with him on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[108,116,48,41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-vK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}