Season 1 Finale – Intermezzo #1

Thank you all for subscribing to our daily walk through post-exilic scriptures so far. We sincerely hope you are being blessed and that G-d is moving in you, stirring you and your leadership to rebuild your temple after Covid-exile.

Why are you getting this extra blog when we are only about a quarter of the way through? Well…to start…it’s free!

In music, an intermezzo is a short connecting instrumental movement in an opera or other larger musical work. In this case, we are about 1/4^th of the way through this study of rebuilding after exile. It’s good to pause and take an inventory and measurements.

We can’t improve a thing without measuring a thing. Please be encouraged to reach out to me with your critique! We would benefit here from a deep dive into methodologies in the book, “4 Disciplines of Execution,” namely the difference between lead measurements and lag measurement. Church outreach and growth programs too often rely on lag measurements like church attendance and don’t even measure lead measurements like number of contacts we make each week against a goal. Keeping our Wildly Important Goals to less than 3 will create our best chance for success.

What are your Spiritual Gifts?

As we rebuild our temple after Covid Exile, it’s deeply important, now more than ever, for us to all know our spiritual gifts. There are many tools online to help you discover yours, but nothing works better than reading scriptures and praying that the Ruach HaKodesh reveal them to you. A good place to start is 1Cor 12 and read through chapter 14.

Here’s one online tool that is pretty good and doesn’t require you to enter any personal data. Spiritual Gifts Assessment

Big Take-Away from Season 1

This is a list of all the Big Take-Aways from all the sections we’ve covered, in order. How did they track with what you were experiencing in your daily life as you read them? Where they pretty much in the correct order? G-d’s word has an amazing ability to provide just the right remedy at just the right time. Do they equip you and your temple to be about the work before us?

1. Pray for our leader/patron that they, whoever they are, would be granted favor and ALL the material needs to make rebuilding possible. G-d doesn’t do anything halfway. G-d, Himself, will go before leveling the mountains, breaking down gates of bronze and cutting through bars of iron.
2. We need to take an inventory of everything we lost during our exile. I believe we already have: we have an MIA list – people that have not returned to our church after Covid exile, as well as the growth we were experiencing before, which hasn’t returned.
3. Pray for our Cyrus. G-d already knows who that is. Pray that the Lord stirs up his/her spirit.
4. Set up a framework for both the workers and supporters – so that it’s easy for people to be one or the other, but make sure they know there is no 3^rd option here. We all have to be dedicated to rebuilding.
5. In order for us to have our inventory returned to us, and acknowledging that some people have moved away and can’t easily move back, perhaps we should consider a homecoming of sorts – an event to return all the inventory to the temple? Perhaps to coincide with the end of our initial outreach effort? Perhaps the Feast of Trumpets? What works best for your church?
6. Pray for new lay ministers
7. Pray for wisdom on offering an opportunity for an offering to outreach
8. Start at the altar, recognize G-d’s sacrifice for us to be here and so dedicated to this effort.
9. Hold festivals and feasts, making a goal of each to rebuild through outreach – inviting others.
10. Pay money, out of outreach offerings, to craftspeople to help us: messaging, materials, food, etc.
11. Pray that our leadership unites in vision and goal.
12. Ask our leadership to plan milestones and celebrations.
13. The enemy will surely come against us. If he doesn’t then we aren’t doing our job right. Pray that G-d rebuke’s the devourer, and that our fruit will not wither on the vine (Mal 3:10-12).
14. Pray for wisdom, and for those of us with the spiritual gift of discernment to discern our friends from our enemies. Just because someone is offering to help you doesn’t make them your friend. We need wisdom and discernment now more than ever.
15. When circumstances bring about a “death to the vision,” rely on your past experiences where the Lord was faithful. Set your mind to growing your faith.
16. Do a sanity check on your efforts. Is your leadership united on outreach? Are the people? Are any of your other efforts stagnating? If so, teach others why this is happening by sharing this chapter from Haggai 1!
17. Call on your leadership and your people to obey G-d and show reverence. He will be faithful and stand with you and stir your spirits.
18. When trials come, realize we are not done yet, take courage, repent first and then get back to work. He will be with you.
19. Pray we are the generation that can still return to the Lord and that we haven’t become the fathers who didn’t listen or pay attention to G-d.
20. Plead with the Lord to frighten away the things that are keeping our people scattered.
21. Pray and ask G-d to reveal the scope cap perimeters to our efforts.
22. Take a moment to be still, silent before the Lord to contemplate how awesome it is that He has joined us in this effort.
23. Pray for G-d to rebuke Satan and pray for our pastor.
24. Let’s encourage our entire fellowship to walk in His ways and perform His service, and that every one of us would overwhelmingly desire to invite our neighbors.
25. Pray that the Lord shows us the incomplete areas of our foundation work.
26. Pray for the wisdom to understand what sacrifices need to be made and the courage to make them.
27. Our pastors need to warn our congregation against getting swept up in the moment and making oaths to give and support rebuilding our temple that they either don’t intend to keep, and once made, they need to properly guard their hearts against failing to carry it through to its completion.
28. In our outreach, we need to pray for the robust and good whom G-d knows to make a Rebuilding offering, and we need to consider how much of that to provide our pastorate so that they can remind us before and long after, that it is Yeshua who restores us.
29. We need to pray for unity between those who lead us as executives and those who lead us pastorally, that Yeshua will be the Branch, the counsel of peace between the two offices.
30. We need to know our own spiritual gifts, not just personally, but we need to know who in the body we can rely on for various needs. Who are our prophets today? In times of trouble, we need to listen to them.
31. G-d will use all events to work together for the good for those who are called according to His purpose.
32. In the death to a vision moment, we need to just keep doing our best, pray that it’s blessed, and He’ll take care of the rest.

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