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Does the Holy Spirit of Christ Reside in This Church? Church Relations

Does the Holy Spirit of Christ Reside in This Church?

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations As we continue to answer the question, “Does the Holy Spirit of Christ reside in this church?” we remind ourselves of the three distinct characteristics which display the Holy Spirit’s presence in a church from our previous blog, and add three more characteristics in our current blog. From Acts 2:42-47:  From part 1: When the Holy Spirit shows up in a church, there is Biblical Instruction (Acts 2:42). “They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching.” When the Holy Spirit shows up at church, there is a loving community (Acts 2:42, 44-45). "They devoted themselves to…
January 31, 2025
Cross-Cultural Missionaries For Christ Church Relations

Cross-Cultural Missionaries For Christ

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become…
October 30, 2024
10 Biblical Truths About Spiritual Gifts Church Relations

10 Biblical Truths About Spiritual Gifts

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  Biblical Passages: 1 Corinthians 12; 1 Peter 4:10-11; Ephesians 4:11-12; Romans 12:6-8 Definition: A Spiritual gift is ANY ability that is GIVEN and EMPOWERED by the Holy Spirit and used in ANY ministry (service) of the church (Wayne Grudem). 10 Truths: Spiritual gifts are not for the elite – they are for everybody in the church Spiritual gifts are not ego-driven – they are God-given Spiritual gifts are not self-propelled – they are Holy Spirit empowered Spiritual gifts are not for selfish consumption – they are for mutual edification. Spiritual gifts are not limited to…
September 12, 2024
New Resource From Church Relations Church Relations

New Resource From Church Relations

Rich Peterson offers up a downloadable Church Leadership Covenant.  After more than our fair share of issues pertaining to poor leadership in one church I pastored, we created a Church Leadership Covenant that the Pastors, Elders, and Church Staff members were asked to sign on an annual basis. Perhaps your leadership team could benefit from the following? Download printable PDF Document or copy and paste words below.  ________________________ Before the Lord and together with my fellow (name of church) Leaders, and with the intent to strengthen our church, I sincerely enter the following covenant: A COVENANT OF TEAM UNITY I now…
August 29, 2024
Two Additional Qualities of Trustworthy Leadership Church Relations

Two Additional Qualities of Trustworthy Leadership

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations/Western Region    Trustworthy Leaders are hard on themselves and gracious to others. The trustworthy leader is going to be a self-disciplined, hard-working person. Leaders who set the bar extremely high for themselves, do not run aimlessly, do not box as one beating the air. Trustworthy leaders discipline themselves, keeping their bodies and hearts fit and under control, lest after preaching to others they themselves should be disqualified. Trustworthy leaders are hard on themselves yet gracious to others. Lots of people these days reverse this order, and they are gracious to themselves and hard on everyone…
August 11, 2024
3 Qualities of a Trustworthy Leader Church Relations

3 Qualities of a Trustworthy Leader

By Rich Peterson  Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create – much faster than you think possible. I am also convinced in every situation nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. And, contrary to popular belief, trust is something you can…
July 26, 2024
Kingdom Leadership Church Relations

Kingdom Leadership

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  General Eisenhower used to demonstrate the art of leadership with a simple piece of string. He’d put it on a table and say: “Pull it and it will follow you wherever you wish. Push it and it will go nowhere at all.” When the Bible speaks of leadership it rarely mentions what a leader DOES, it speaks instead of what a leader IS. What you are is as important as what you do. It was said of David that he “led the people with integrity of heart and guided them with skillful hands “(Ps. 78:72).…
July 14, 2024
What is Servant Leadership? Church Relations

What is Servant Leadership?

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  You and I do what we do as pastors, missionaries, and church leaders because we have a passion for making a difference in our world. Some of us are even passionate about making the world a different place. We see what the world should be and could be and by the grace of God would be – because we are called to be leaders in the kingdom of God. But we are increasingly ineffective in our work and call if we seek to lead according to the standards of the world and not according to the mandates…
June 26, 2024
Never Too Old for Mission Church Relations

Never Too Old for Mission

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  In a recent online event entitled, “The Changing Landscape of Mission.” Ted Esler, President of Missio Nexus suggested that the global population is growing older. While our focus on mobilizing young people to engage in cross-cultural mission remains a priority, perhaps local churches and mission organizations (like WorldVenture) need to acknowledge the importance of unleashing older people on mission. “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” (Acts 13:2-3) That’s pretty vague, don’t you think? I mean, if the work of international missions was so important, we…
June 10, 2024
It is Finished! Church Relations

It is Finished!

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  Because of a good friend at WorldVenture, I now wear a new piece of jewelry with the word TETELESTAI engraved on a leather bracelet. TETELESTAI is the Greek word translated, “It is finished,” and is of course the last word Jesus cried from His cross. I love this word because it reminds me of the following: It is finished - We are free! The power of sin in our lives – finished! The power of immorality in our lives – finished! The power of addiction to drugs, alcohol, lust, greed, any vice, or godless behavior…
May 26, 2024
3 Habits of a Godly Mother Church Relations

3 Habits of a Godly Mother

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  Read 1 Samuel 1 and 2.  A Godly Mother Prays Fervently Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord. 11 And she made this vow: “O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be yours for his entire lifetime, and as a sign that he has been dedicated to the Lord, his hair will never be cut. “Oh no, sir!” she replied. “I haven’t been drinking wine or anything stronger. But I am…
May 12, 2024
3 Priorities of Christian Leadership Church Relations

3 Priorities of Christian Leadership

by Rich Peterson, Church Relations  HEART A life in harmony with God. What is important to God is important to you. What breaks God’s heart, breaks your heart. When God says go there, you go there. When God says stop that in your life, you stop that in your life. When God says, this is wrong and I want you to change, you change what is wrong because you have a heart for God. You have a heart that is sensitive to the things of God. “For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that…
May 5, 2024
How To Get Your Congregation Excited About Missions Church Relations

How To Get Your Congregation Excited About Missions

On April 24, 2024, Rich Peterson (Church Relations) and Nikole Hahn (Digital Engagement and Disciple-Making Coordinator) gathered with people from different churches and mission teams to talk about how to better engage your congregation in missions. The time was rich with fellowship and sharing, but we have edited out the sharing and interactions to maintain confidentiality. https://youtu.be/9fbx0ACez1M Helpful Links: Learn about Church Relations here.  Download the Mission Guide: WorldVenture.com/MissionsWorkshop  Interested in serving overseas? Complete this form to talk to someone.  Learn more about Nikole Hahn. Learn about Lausanne here. Bookmark our events page for future online events: WorldVenture.com/Events Articles: How…
April 25, 2024
Total Dependence Church Relations

Total Dependence

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations Total dependence happens to everyone who earnestly strives to live for Christ. It happens especially to those who are striving to live for Christ. It happened to me the first time when, on a typical Wednesday evening before a prayer meeting in February 1990, the Chairman of Deacons announced that he had placed the church properties "for sale" on the open Real Estate market that morning. Over the following 18 months, I would personally experience this thing called dependence upon God. It happened a second time on September 28, 1997, after having preached a sermon on the…
April 14, 2024
Time To Pray: High and Lifted Up Church Relations

Time To Pray: High and Lifted Up

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  Read Isaiah 6: 1-8, then pray: God we are so thankful that you are high and lifted up. We join the angels in their praise of you as “Holy, holy, holy.” Almighty God, the earth is full of your glory, and we bow before you as Sovereign Lord of All. As we bow in worship, we acknowledge that we are people full of sin and that we come from a race of sinners. We are unworthy of you, your grace, and your presence in our lives. We are ruined – take the burning coal from…
April 6, 2024
Spiritual Preparations for Holy Week Church Relations

Spiritual Preparations for Holy Week

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  The Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday before Easter As a “recovering Baptist,” I came late to the party regarding some of the more liturgical approaches to worship. About three decades ago, I began using the Christian Calendar in my devotional/private worship times as a way of moving through the various seasons of the year. What this means is that I am now more likely to concern myself with things like Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost than I am to concern myself with National Bird Day (Jan. 5), Houseplant Appreciation Day (Jan. 10),…
March 21, 2024
YWAM Tragedy: Our Hope is in The Lord Church Relations

YWAM Tragedy: Our Hope is in The Lord

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  In a tragic accident in Tanzania this past weekend, eleven members of Youth With A Mission (YWAM) lost their lives when a large truck experiencing brake failure collided with and overwhelmed one of the organization’s minibuses. It is the largest loss of life in the history of YWAM. As fellow workers in the mission's enterprise, WorldVenture grieves for the families, friends, co-workers, and YWAM supporters touched by this heartbreaking calamity. The WorldVenture family also prays for God’s healing to those who continue to struggle for life, comfort to those who are experiencing pain and loss…
February 28, 2024
Single For The Savior Church Relations

Single For The Savior

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations Did the Apostle Paul really have it right when he wrote: “It is good for a person not to marry?"  On the surface that sounds a bit like some of these unflattering quotations about marriage: I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. – Rita Rudner All marriages are happy. It’s the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.– Raymond Hill I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late.…
February 20, 2024
To Continue With A Knife In Your Heart Church Relations

To Continue With A Knife In Your Heart

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  We need the goodness of God the most when we’re wounded, when we’re hurting, when things are falling apart, and we’re broken. As I read through Hebrews 11 recently, I came across a list of unnamed heroes of faith. They lived in caves, were poorly clothed, thirsty and hungry, persecuted, and sawn in two. All they ever accomplished was to suffer and die. In our culture, the hero is the person who is a winner; the one who gets measurable results. But as followers of Jesus, we need to focus our faith not on results,…
February 10, 2024
A Prayer For Peace Church Relations

A Prayer For Peace

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations  There is a lot of thought about war these days. War in Ukraine, war in Gaza, and potential wars in so many other places are at the forefront of many around the world. Domestic violence continues to be an international concern. Gang wars, drive-by shootings, increased crime rates, and the inability to work through interpersonal issues – all these things (and many more) point to a lack of peace. I was surprised to read that in 3,550 years of recorded civilization, only 286 of those years have been without war. During that same period, eight…
February 3, 2024
Good News or Bad News? Church Relations

Good News or Bad News?

By Rich Peterson, Church Relations My youngest daughter’s ninth birthday is a day that will live in infamy around the Peterson household. On that day (January 4, 2013) we were just coming away from a church member’s cabin in the Rocky Mountains on our way to be with our older children, their friends, and our friends from Australia at a nearby ski resort, when instead of taking the necessary sharp right turn in the road I accidently drove straight off the side of the mountain before us! So, do you want the good news or the bad news first? The…
January 27, 2024
A New View For The New Year! Church Relations

A New View For The New Year!

By Rich Peterson  Has the news of late got you down? Has life become so overwhelming that you have forgotten Him who is your life? Has life become so frustrating with the endless demands of family and job that you rarely experience the freedom of grace? Has life become so boring, so mundane, so routine, and so bothersome that you have lost all hope of ever accomplishing anything amazing for your God? Has life become so hard that you have lost the joy of your salvation? Has life become so predictable that you have lost all hope? Has life become…
January 12, 2024
Imperfect (And Yet… ) Church Relations

Imperfect (And Yet… )

By Rich Peterson  I attended a memorial service recently for a former Worship Pastor who was engaged in active ministry in the Denver area for over 40+ years. His younger brother (a retired Senior Pastor) presented the “raw truth” about the deceased, highlighting the great impact of his ministry while never sidestepping the fact that his brother wrestled with many personal demons even into the last few weeks of his life. The comments reminded me of some things I came across while doing research about the rather obscure Old Testament character with the unusual name, Jephthah. I’m not certain who…
January 7, 2024
Discipleship is Devotion to Jesus Church Relations

Discipleship is Devotion to Jesus

By Rich Peterson  Devotion is an amazing quality. It enables men to lay down their lives for their country. It empowers spouses to see in their mates what no other person is able to see. Devotion is that which pushes a person to become what they would never be without it. In Acts 2:42, the Bible tells us that the new believers in Christ “devoted themselves to the apostles teaching.” The teachings of the apostles were the narratives and instructions of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, as His words and deeds were passed on to those trusted few. Through the…
December 8, 2023
Big Ears, A Smile, And A Happy Heart! Church Relations

Big Ears, A Smile, And A Happy Heart!

By Rich Peterson When I was a little boy, I had very large ears. So large in fact that my parents took me to a plastic surgeon to see if there was anything to be done about them. He simply shared with us that my ears were “large” but that my head would eventually grow into them and all would be well. I will let you be the judge of whether or not the doctor was right – but ever since then I have been aware of the fact that I have been given two big ears – the better…
December 1, 2023
How to Walk Your Dog Church Relations

How to Walk Your Dog

By Rich Peterson As Christians, our lives have been transformed by the love of Jesus Christ. Our life is no longer our own, for we have been bought at the considerable price of Christ’s sacrificial death. We are transformed because of His love; our lives ought to bear that out daily. The Apostle Paul once wrote, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Ephesians 4:1). From another translation, we read, “Walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” What does a “life worthy of…
November 18, 2023
The Most Positive People In The World Church Relations

The Most Positive People In The World

By Rich Peterson True or False? Most people would rather be happy than sad. Most people choose gladness over sadness. Most people choose celebration over mourning. Most people prefer attending a wedding over attending a funeral. Most people prefer joy to sadness. And most people prefer to be around those who are joyful rather than hang around people who are depressed. That said, there is nothing more ridiculous than pretend joy. Nothing more preposterous than a plastic, put on, pump-yourself-up, artificial hope. Nothing worse than the TV commercial mom who becomes overwhelmingly euphoric when her liquid detergent does a number…
October 8, 2023
Until Jesus Shows Up Church Relations

Until Jesus Shows Up

By Rich Peterson In a very real way, life is both meaningless and hopeless UNTIL JESUS SHOWS UP. Life, for a great many people, feels like a condemnation to live in a sunrise/sunset reality for ever and ever without purpose or end. Enslaved to get up, go to work, go to sleep, go to the grave, life is hopelessness and despair. Life, as the existential philosophers claim, is meaningless and nothing. Not only nothing, but nothing without end – no conclusion, no full stop. On and on the cycles of world history spin – no one can do a thing…
September 17, 2023
How To Achieve Individual and Corporate Transformation Church Relations

How To Achieve Individual and Corporate Transformation

By Rich Peterson I am finding it more difficult these days to locate Christ-followers who are maintaining the “balance” between our Christian call of individual righteousness and corporate transformation. For followers of Jesus, this dual calling can never become as one-sided as it appears to have become over the last number of years for a great many Christians (perhaps especially in the United States). The Bible tells us that God “rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with equity” (Ps. 9:8). The Scriptures also tell us that “righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne” (Ps. 89:14).…
September 5, 2023
Celebrate Our Great God Church Relations

Celebrate Our Great God

By Rich Peterson We went with the trumpet-playing priests – and the singers…They played and sang loudly under the direction of Jezrahiah the choir director. Many sacrifices were offered that joyous day, for God had given the people cause for great joy. The women and children also participated in the celebration, and the joy of the people of Jerusalem could be heard far away (Nehemiah 12: 41-43, NLT). One of the near misses as a couple came on an evening my wife and I participated in a very charismatic worship/concert experience. I don’t even remember the artist, but I do…
August 13, 2023
Authenticity in “Barbie Land” Church Relations

Authenticity in “Barbie Land”

By Rich Peterson There’s a line from the song entitled Stained Glass Masquerade by Casting Crowns that asks a very good question regarding the need for Christian authenticity: Are we happy plastic people Under shiny plastic steeples? The brokenhearted, the hurt, the outcast, the beggar, the world at large living in ugly pain and despair wants to know – Are we happy plastic people Under shiny plastic steeples? People today, like people of all time and people everywhere, want to know that God is real, and that this real God can make a real difference in real life. What seems…
August 5, 2023
Hit The Pause Button and Celebrate! Church Relations

Hit The Pause Button and Celebrate!

By Rich Peterson (Church Relations Officer)  Read Nehemiah 12 27-43 and consider the following: The people of God in Nehemiah’s day gathered to celebrate God’s provision of the Wall and they did so through an elaborate worship service where they joined together to worship God more fully. Each week Christians celebrate God’s amazing grace offered through Jesus Christ; we don’t come together to dedicate a wall – we dedicate ourselves and we do so in worship! The first feature of effective corporate worship is the need to PAUSE. We come together for fellowship and worship because there is a need…
July 29, 2023
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