Profile of an Effective Pastor

Profile of an Effective Pastor.

1. His church grew when he left it faster and went farther than when he had lead it, being led by people he had trained and mentored for 3 years, engaging seriously in the church planting movement of the time across two continents.
2. His small group was willing to go to the ends of the earth for him.  They would die for him.  They thought he walked on water.  
3. Took criticism by the establishment mainline church leaders and the political establishment without a negative response, to the point of being crucified by them for his church growth strategy and success.
4. Built a congregation of over 5000 in just three years.
5. Fed this entire congregation on more than one occasion for the cost of a box lunch.
6. Was effectively involved in healing ministry to the point of seeing lame people walking, blind people receiving their site, and even the dead being raised allegedly on more than one occasion.
7. Was effectively involved in deliverance ministry.
8. Did outreach with the least, the last and the lost, the lowest and most degenerate portion of the population.
9. Did cross cultural ministry with outcast and unreached people groups, paving way for future church planting by members of his staff down the road.  
10. Sent 72 persons out by two’s as missionaries with no financial support except what they raised themselves.
11. His flock collectively published the #1 bestseller on all the charts.
12. He did all this without any formal seminary training, any denominational support, no salary, no parsonage, no permanent structure, no formal ordination, while writing no books, not playing a guitar, no audio/visual team, or no worship team.  

John14:11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. 12 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

An open letter to GC 2012 delegates

April 11, 2012

Dear Delegate to GC2012,

First let me thank you for your willingness to serve as a delegate to this General Conference and the long hours and hard work it entails.   As an ordained elder in the Mississippi Annual Conference and a delegate to our Jurisdictional Conference, I want to thank you as well for being willing to shoulder such a huge spiritual burden as leaders of a portion of the whole world wide Church.  I wanted to take this moment to share with you my story in hopes that it can be a help to you in your deliberation upon some of the most weighty topics to be considered at this and every General Conference.

I was born in 1971 as an unwanted child of an unwanted pregnancy.  My birth mother was likely an unwed teenage mother who gave me very poor pre-natal care.  I was adopted at 8 weeks old by Lawrence and Pattie Sparks, a loving and wonderful childless couple who raised me, loved me and prayed me into the person I am today.  Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) got pregnant in 1969.  Roe v. Wade was filed in 1970, argued before the Supreme Court in December 1971 and reargued in Oct. 1972 with a ruling by the Supreme Court in January, 1973.  Had this case been fast tracked or I been born a few months later, I might not be here with you to write this email.  I find the issue of abortion to be deeply personal for me and difficult.  I share a deep sense of connection with other adopted children.  Over my life that sense of connection and almost familial connectedness has also extended to the thousands upon thousands of unwanted children whose lives are snuffed out each year before they have ever even had a chance at this life at a life like what I got to live.  Why was I spared and why are they not?  

I am writing to you to ask you to consider strengthening, not weakening, our church’s support of an unborn child’s right to a life.  I became physically ill the first time I realized how close I had come to not being born.  And I often wonder what and who have we missed out on because someone chose to terminate a pregnancy.  It is also very hurtful to me and other adopted children when a pro choice person argues that my birth mother's rights to control her own body supersede my or any unborn child’s right to be born, supersede my/their right to a life.  I find it perplexing for persons to on one hand argue that we must look to the individual, to the person, the human and accept them for who they are when it comes to sexuality and orientation and at the same time be unwilling to see the person that is or could be but will never be because of a life cut short by an abortion. If you have trouble visualizing that person, they are me. We as Methodists say that we believe every person is a person of sacred worth.  Shouldn’t that include all person regardless of their status as born or unborn?  Shouldn’t we call on the world to protect the most vulnerable persons, those that are yet in their mother’s womb, the very place that God is knitting them together, counting the hairs on their head and knowing them even then by name?  What are missing out on, who are we missing out on, by not?

Sincerely yours,

Stephen Sparks