Brian Houston – Preparing Future Generations (my title for his message) Ps 45:16- “Instead of Your fathers shall be Your sons, Whom You shall make princes in all the earth.”
A prophesy of Jesus to the Israelites: you won’t always look to your fathers (Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David) but that you will one day honor the Son (Jesus) and make Him prince of all the earth (Ben Boles interpretation of this verse). But Brian used as a way of looking to honor future generations of the church to make sure we are preparing future leaders and reaching the lost in future generations.
Fathers= Proven and Predictable (not in a bad way) Sons= Unproven and Unpredictable (in a way that worries older leaders who want to go down proven and predictable paths for the church)
In the church we want to fall back on proven, tried and tested successes. But we Jesus who to the Jewish leaders was unpredictable and was leading the people in new ways that they didn’t approve. In John 4 we Jesus doing things that Jewish men didn’t do (1) talk to a woman who wasn’t their wife or relative (2) talk to a Samaritan.
Predictable in loyalty, reliability, what we believe, in our word, commitment is our friend. But predictability is an enemy to creativity, innovation and influence (of future generations).
So much of the church is not yet seen (in ways we haven’t done things and in people groups we haven’t had to adapt to reach (1 Cor (:19-22))
We as leaders cannot just read we have to think. He told a story about a guy putting together a piece of furniture and was having a hard time and a guy walked by and asked if he could help and after a few minutes began to arrange all the pieces and started putting it together. After he was finish the first man asked how did you get that from the directions and the guy answered I cannot read I just had to think about it.
You can only be experienced in the proven and predictable but leading into the future is going to take chances in the unproven and unpredictable.
Culture is our servant not our master. Keep the main thing the main thing.
We’ve got to step into what God has for the future of the church.
Better to be a history maker than a historian.
