Jack Hayford. That name alone should pull in quite a crowd of senior pastors and staff. Jack Hayford was the senior pastor of the Church on the Way, a Foursquare Church at Van Nuys, California. Most people would know the song he composed, Majesty, worship His Majesty. Over a hundred pastors were at Trinity @ Paya Lebar to attend the Love Singapore Pastors’ Forum. Jack Hayford talked about the need to focus on the essentials and to avoid jumping from one new methodology or model to another. Don’t go for the numbers, he says, but work on the essentials. All his years as a pastor he never had numerical targets. Its not about acquiring people but discipling the people the Lord sends. The essentials were birthed out of his experience. They are: 1) work on a discpling plan to teach and incarnate the word among the people; 2) develop the worship life of the church as it opens the people up to the Spirit’s presence and power; 3) cultivate a ministry focus, releasing people to minister outside the church building; 4) and have a prayer strategy, of which he had no time to elaborate, or I dozed off.
Blogpastor, do you think people listened more carefully because he is “Jack Hayford”? Don’t some of us already believe this and do the same? Don’t we listen when a local pastor says it as opposed to a foreign pastor saying it? Sorry, I just feel like for some people being a Western pastor with a track record makes him more an authority than our own who have remained faithful and have proven fruit but are not as “authoritative” because he/she is not Western/Caucasian, published or something like that. I believe Jack Hayford would be the kind of man of God who would or should remind our people that God speaks to and through our own. Can we believe that about ourselves?
Okay, just that kind of morning.
I mean, Blogpastor, you could very easily say the same but I understand that we are imperfect beings and some of us will prefer to hear it from Jack rather than you. Sigh. Credibility…why won’t we give it to our own?
Hopefully, its not a colonial hang-up from our past. White man knows best, you know. Most of us pastors are past that for we are willing to hear an Asian pastor or even a local pastor say that. But he needs to have a large church, a track record, as you say. It would be nice to have a local pastor say that: perhaps, Edmund Chan has said that before, if I remember correctly.