pat loughery

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★ Attention Discouraged Church Planters!

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Pat L

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If you’re discouraged with the lack of visible fruit from your ministry, try this exercise:

Sit down at your desk and make a list of the names of every person whose life intersects with yours and for whom you try to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit as you interact. How many people do you put yourself into the position of allowing God to speak to through your life, prayers, words, actions?

Some examples from my own life this past week:

  • The Guatemalan lady who needs a ride to Immigration today to see if her sister has been deported.
  • The elderly gentleman who stands at the street corner with printed signs that read “chat about health with Ludwig 555-XXXX”.
  • The waitress at your restaurant who likes talking about themes of good and evil in art
  • Your neighbor whose husband has recently left her and their kids
  • The waitress at the Chinese restaurant who loves your little redhaired daughter and is disappointed that she’s not with you for lunch today (side note: Just like puppies are girl magnets when you’re a college guy, if you really want to start up conversations, or have others start them up with you, just have a curly redhaired girl. works every time :-)).
  • Your new worship leaders who are looking for a condo
  • The checker at Safeway who knows a mutual friend
  • The checker at QFC who leads worship at another church in town
  • The bank teller who has kids the same age as your sister-in-law
  • Your friend from high school who works for campus crusade, that you are a prayer support person for
    Etc..

    I’m sure you get the idea.

    Last week I started realizing the number of relationships that are growing as a result of our call to plant a church here in my town. Their level of Kingdom fruitfulness is of course varied. But I’m beginning to see what God’s up to among us here.

    All that is weird, because it’s what our vision is: Our vision is to transform the world through our relationship with God and with people.

    But until recently I haven’t known that I could measure my relationships with people. It’s a gross measure, certainly, but it’s eye-opening. And it encourages me to see the variety of relationships that are deepening simply as I’m asking the Lord to show me what he’s doing out here in my hometown and beyond.

    • One response to “★ Attention Discouraged Church Planters!”

    1. kasharu George Avatar
      kasharu George

      Iam a pastor who would like to know what you do so that we can , share more about the ministry. Iam the founder of the ministry here, Iwould like also need to get materials about church planting.
      We would like you to come and have some teachings about church planting. we many pastors who have churches, but the churches are not growing.
      Let me have your states of faith so that we can , see what God can do with us together. we need one other, waiting to hearing from you.
      may God bless you,

      George Kasharu- Senior pastor,

      Redeemed church ministries, Uganda.

      Like

      Reply

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    Hello,

    I’m Pat

    Passionate about the common good, human flourishing, lifelong learning, being a good ancestor.

    Things I do: Engineering leadership; Grad Instructor in spirituality, creativity, digital personhood, pilgrimage.

    Powerlifter, mountain biker, Gonzaga basketball fan, reader, urban sketcher, hiker.

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