SERVOLUTION: A Moment with Dino Rizzo
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Thu, May 14, 2009
- Viewed 72
- (33) comments so far
Todd - first of all I want to say thank you for all you do for the Church today. You’re a big blessing and it’s an honor to have you as a part of this blog tour.I think the thing that churches need to remember as they move into a culture of serving is that it is not complicated, but it does take time. Be patient, and be willing to start with what you have. Where has God given you favor? What talents or gifts do the people on your team have that can be put toward helping the poor and hurting?
When we first started as a church, we had a few guys who could cook - so we started cooking meals to give away. It wasn’t thousands of meals like our Cooking For Christ team provided people with last fall after a hurricane hit our city, but we blessed a lot of people with free meals and a lot of love. And things grew from there.
Too often we get in the trap of looking at what we don’t have. Elijah asked the widow what she had, and they went to work on her miracle from that point. Look around you and take a little inventory of what God has already given you and start there. You’ll find that everything you need for the job God has for you to do today is right there in front of you.
That’s a great answer! Start small. Where has God given you favor already?
I encourage you to pick up a copy of Dino’s Servolution book today. You can get a copy here! You can also check out the Servolution website here.
I consider Pastor Dino Rizzo a friend, and I'm excited for Dino's brand new book titled "Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving". Servolution will make you laugh, make you cry, and above all it will make you ready to serve others like never before. Dino shares some practical ideas and strategies in every chapter!
I recently was asked to be a part of today's Servolution blog tour and I immediately said yes. My question for Dino was: Dino, what would you suggest a small, totally inwardly-focused church do as a first step to becoming a church that serves its community?
Here's Pastor Dino's response...
Comments
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Leonard on Fri, May 15, 2009
Katrina, thanks but the question was a direct one to CS about his ministry. I am not sure you can answer that for him.
Our calling is not to merely preach the gospel but to make disciples. If our task was information, then by all means pass out tracts, get a PA sytem and stand on a corner. However what Jesus asked us to be actively involved with was disciple making. This involves the good news of Christ and then a process of teaching them.
Our goal is transformation, A complete regeneration of heart and mind by the good news of Christ. I believe when you reduce the gospel to a mere set of facts you miss the Power that the gospel is.
By the way, I regularly share Christ with others. This position I come from is not about being ashamed of the Gospel as you and CS have suggested. It is about knowing how important the Gospel is and how it is the only thing that can change a life. I believe it matters so much I want to make sure the seeds sown go in the best soil possible.
Katrina, what I do not see or hear in your words is a kind heart. I cant say I have seen it in any of your posting. I do not hear gentleness and reverence as we are instructed to have. Your words do not come across as seasoned with salt as we have been instructed in the scripture. Your words come across and belittling, mean spirited and rude. If this is your intent, keep it up. I asked you this off line once but got no response from you.
I cannot see or hear grace in you. Jesus was filled with truth but he was also filled with Grace. I encourage you to take a look at these words. I mean no harm, just concerned for the tone and attitude you have displayed here at MMI in the past.
CS on Fri, May 15, 2009
Leonard:
To complement Katrina’s response, your question was bordering on pragmatism. We are called to faithfully do the work of God in preaching to all everyone a message of faith and repentance in response to the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. If one person hears this message and receives Jesus, praise God. If a million people hear this message, praise God. But either way, no matter how many people are saved by God or not, the Gospel must be shared.
If numbers are the issue and hangup, consider Jeremiah the prophet. He did as he was told by God and did not see a single person respond. Would you call his ministry errant or ineffective? I doubt that you would.
Or, it’s kind of like the posts that Todd has put here before about being a, “successful,” pastor. If you exercise the Word and your congregation grows, are you successful? If you practice proper church discipline according to the Bible and your congregation shrinks, are you successful?
So, if I dutifully preach the Word as I do good deeds, and yet see no one saved by God, was I wrong in what I was doing, or was I doing what God commanded me to do?
But, the point here is that if the Gospel is not being shared in an active and direct way in the first place, we can’t even get into an effective discussion about effectiveness or the like.
—
CS
Leonard on Fri, May 15, 2009
CS, my question is about making disciples. If an individual goes about getting people converted but does not draw that person into a biblical relationship with other believers, they are not making disciples.
Again, I believe in preaching the Gospel. your response here comes across as avoiding the question. I am sincerely interested in your answer. Do you walk with people you preach to in such a way as to connect them with other believers in Christ so they can become mature disciples?
One reason I am not opposed to friendship evangelism is that the point of it is to make disciples not converts. To build a relationship not merely for the purpose of getting a response to information but to actually partner with God the Holy Spirit in drawing someone into a life long relationship with Christ and His body.
This is not the only way but in our context and culture here today, It is very effective.
Katrina on Fri, May 15, 2009
I guess I have rubbed Todd the wrong way so as to prompt him to remove my posts…it is his blog none-the-less so I guess he can do what he wants.
Leonard,
You are reading your own prejudices into my posts. What you are hearing is what you want to hear. I am sure if we got to speak you’d change your mind but nevertheless the truth does cause a defense of one’s own error when it is directly confronted so I understand your animosity and don’t take it personally.
Discipleship is great whenever possible but most times that is not possible. If you get a chance to listen to this link http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2162126027431181510 you’ll see by the testimony that though discipleship is fantastic it is often not possible. As you can clearly see, when God saves someone He does it completely and His Spirit brings them to a place where they can be fed spiritually. Our God is an awesome God!
Katrina on Fri, May 15, 2009
Now I must leave to go preach the Gospel to the crowds standing in line to go to “The Legends of Hip Hop Tour” at the Baton Rouge River Center…...I wonder if HPC will be serving there?
I’ll check back when I return home.
Leonard on Fri, May 15, 2009
CS, I can say we agree on the necessity of preaching the Gospel and I can say we agree on the authority of scripture. But I am not sure we land on the same page here.
The command of JESUS was to make disciples. We do so by witnessing to Christ in such a way as to partner with God the Holy Spirit and see people drawn to Him.
I find it interesting that someone who would and has so quickly condemned the “false” conversions of churches would have so little regard for the great commission. To make DISCIPLES.
I think it is you who drips of pragmatism…
In essence you seem to be saying - I preach, if they are really saved they will want to go to church… I do what I can… I just do what I am supposed to do… let the other stuff sort its way out. So is it your goal to make disciples or preach the gospel? Did you not have a problem with a church and how it communicated the Gospel with you? So wouldn’t it make sense you would want them to find a great church. One where the true gospel was preached?
What about the person who knows nothing about Christ at all, who does not have any idea of how to take the next step of faith. Do you baptize them? If you are following the pattern you espouse, you must see this as a necessity as well. What about the person who is Catholic, do you direct them back to the local Catholic Church so they can be told they were already saved because of baptism as an infant. Philip baptized the Eunuch, do you.
Katrina, I have no animosity for you and do not defend my error but rather challenge your spirit and the harshness at which you communicate. It is the common tactic to avoid such introspection by claiming those who challenge are in error and aligning yourself with Jesus. I will pray for you, in this matter you make me sad.
CS on Fri, May 15, 2009
Leonard:
If you’re in an area where you have an opportunity to preach and share Jesus, but may not have an opportunity to sit people down and actively disciple them, do you share Jesus with them, or not?
(And that video link Katrina posted is awesome. I love hearing that story.)
—
CS
Leonard on Fri, May 15, 2009
CS,
You are not answering my question. I do not avoid sharing Christ with poeple. As much as possible I will work within a structure that points and connect people to other believers. When this is not possible I get phone numbers and contact info and will hunt down a local church. I am connected with people who have connections most every place I go. I network for the sake of making disciples. So if you will here are my questions again.
Is your goal to preach or make disciples?
Do you baptize the people who convert under your preaching?
Are the people who are converting under your preaching finding homes in the body of Christ?
CS on Fri, May 15, 2009
Leonard:
Let’s tackle your questions directly, then.
“Is your goal to preach or make disciples?”
My goal is to preach so that people become disciples. I don’t preach for preaching’s sake; I preach so that people will become Christians.
“Do you baptize the people who convert under your preaching?”
If I had an opportunity to, I would. In my church, baptism is handled usually with the pastoral team. But, I’ve got something more about this below.
“Are the people who are converting under your preaching finding homes in the body of Christ?”
When I can facilitate this, I do help people into finding church homes.
Now that those questions have been answered, here’s something to consider. In open-air preaching, those who may be converted may never show their faces. You may never see the person who is convicted of sin and comes to repentance and faith. And therefore you may never have a chance to disciple or baptize that person. So, going back to my question which you dodged, if you’re in an area where you have an opportunity to preach and share Jesus, but may not have an opportunity to sit people down and actively disciple them, do you share Jesus with them, or not?
—
CS
Peter Hamm on Fri, May 15, 2009
The great commission is to make disciples, not converts.
I make disciples very well in the act of “friendship evangelism”.
I don’t so much in the act of drive-by preaching for the hopeful purpose of conversion.
An issue has been made with the original post where none exists. Inferences have been made, not necessarily correct ones.
CS writes above “In the act of evangelism, there are tons of times where in the process of spreading the Gospel that a relationship cannot be forged afterwards that would facilitate discipleship due to distance or other circumstances. Consider how the early church people would go and preach from town to town.” Uh… in my Bible, Paul spent a great deal of time in the places he went to. He didn’t blow into town, preaching the Gospel and hoping that it took. I don’t think that was the norm in the early church at all.
Katrina on Sun, May 17, 2009
Leonard,
If you ask Dino Rizzo about his testimony he will tell you that a man carrying a cross on the beach in South Carolina stopped by his retail hut and handed him a tract. He read it and brought it home but threw it away. His mother found it in crumpled up in the trash can in his room and promptly flattened it out and left it on his dresser. He read it again and it brought him to his knees. That cross-carrying Christian did not have a chance to disciple Dino Rizzo and so it goes with God’s method of saving people.
Discipleship is important but the making of disciples must first begin with the making of Christians. Our first obligation is to share the Gospel with as many people as we can. God will save some immediately or He may be allowing you to water a seed that has already been planted or let someone water the seed you plant but it is always God that gives the increase. If someone gets saved years after you took the time to share the truth of the Gospel you might not even be around to disciple that individual but I trust that the God who is mighty to save is mighty to keep them.
Peter Hamm on Sun, May 17, 2009
Katrina, I agree that we need to be people who share the Gospel, but you write “Our first obligation is to share the Gospel with as many people as we can.” I respectfully disagree. The Great Commission says to make disciples. That is our obligation…
I would rather make 10 disciples that last in my lifetime than 200 converts who don’t last.
In other words, discipleship is not just “important”. It is our purpose. It is what we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to make. It is what we are supposed to concentrate on.
CS on Sun, May 17, 2009
Peter:
What is your take on some of the great itinerant preachers of the past several hundred years including Whitefield, Spurgeon, Graham, and others who would go from place to place preaching and not often being the ones in the discipling process?
And a convert who doesn’t last was never a convert at all.
—
CS
Katrina on Sun, May 17, 2009
Peter,
You wrote: “I would rather make 10 disciples that last in my lifetime than 200 converts who don’t last. “ I think this may be the point of contention. YOU nor I cannot make a single convert. The 200 that don’t last are false converts. False converts are made by men. True believers are made by God and they last because His saving grace is eternal. Scripture clearly tells us that salvation is of the Lord and nothing could be more lucid. The proof of that is the fact that we pray and ask God to save people. If salvation was a “free will” choice of man, why would we pray and ask God to do the saving? If we are faithful to preach the Gospel, we will either be planting or watering….we never know. The making of a disciple is a direct result of their salvation which comes about by the foolishness of the message preached. I don’t want to come across as discounting the importance of discipleship but it is not often possible. I concede that Spurgeon’s preaching created many disciples of Christ but I don’t know of any (not that there aren’t any) that were personally discipled.
Peter Hamm on Sun, May 17, 2009
CS,
Whitefield and Spurgeon lived and preached in a time when the local church was the center of community life, it is no more. So it’s a different time and culture. Graham worked closely and intentionally with the local church to try and insure that “converts” became disciples. Always successful? No doubt no.
Katrina,
You write “I don’t want to come across as discounting the importance of discipleship but it is not often possible.” It is not often possible? It is always required, it is the great commission, it is the last and most important thing (perhaps) that Christ tells us to do.
The bottom line is that you are both, imho, assuming there is a lack of “Gospel preaching” in the kind of friendship evangelism that someone like Rizzo is talking about. You are, again imho, reaching for an argument where none really necessarily exists. And I think you are assuming things about this kind of “lifestyle evangelism” every time one of these kinds of posts comes up, too.
In this 21st century post-christian era, eople I know who don’t believe in Christ have no interest in listening to someone who wants to preach the Gospel to them so that they might get saved, and then perhaps just move on, without necessarily loving them or being their friend or (as I’ve seen far too often), without even necessarily even getting to know them. They have a great interest in finding out more about people they KNOW and why their lives are different, why they value honesty and integrity (even when they aren’t always perfect at it), why they serve and love others, why they love their wives and kids, and why they worship Christ, and what that means…
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