Lessons Learned

Got to spend some time with other church planters today from the metro area. I always love to get together with these guys. It always encourages and challenges me. We typically talk about what everyone is doing and the lessons they have learned over the last season of life. As the facilitator of our meeting asked "what are you learning these days" my mind was immediately filled with lessons that I have learned over the couple of years. I thought I would share a few here.

1) Expect the Unexpected-- God will always do things in your church that you never dreamed that you would be apart of. When you go into the journey of planting a church you will always have in your mind what it is going to "look like." The reality is, you never know what it is going to look like. For instance here in NYC God has really opened doors for us to to do ministry with those living with HIV/ AIDS. We never had this ministry in any of our "vision" documents, but it is the ministry that God has given us and quite frankly it is the ministry that we are seeing the most open doors in. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of other ministries we are involved in and they are doing great things, it is just that this one area came out of no where and God really seems to be using it.

2) Invest in Leadership-- Your ability to grow a healthy church will rest solely on your ability to raise up healthy leaders. We are entering a season at The Gallery Church were we are refocusing our efforts on connecting with and investing in our leaders. A couple of the things we are doing to invest is: 1) Send resources that will be valuable to our leaders. Things that will feed into their lives. 2) Take them away on retreats. We feel like we can accomplish more in a 48 hour retreat than a years worth of training. All in all, we are trying to create a culture that values leadership.

3) Embrace Your Gifts-- As pastors, each of us are gifted in different ways. The problem is that as pastors we have to wear so many different hats that we will inevitably have to operate outside of our gifting. If we end up operating out of our gifting to much and for too long we will be out of balance in our personal lives and we will create a strain on our staff teams. If the main leader is out of alignment then chances are the whole organization will be out of alignment. The remedy for this is for us to embrace what we are gifted to do and then empower others to do what we are not gifted to do. We need to steer clear of the tendency that says a pastor has to be a jack of all trades. "He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastor/teachers."


My list of lessons is up to 15, so I will continue to blog more of them. I would love to hear your thoughts as to the lessons you are learning.

HIV Testing and The Gallery Church

I have said many times that when we planted this church there was a specific demographic that we thought we would have a direct impact on. We thought that we would connect with lots of artist and college students. In a lot of ways we have connected with that demographic and believe that God has a lot in store for us in that regard in the future, but the thing that has surprised us the most is our impact on people who are living with HIV or AIDS here in the city. Never in a million years did we think that we would have the opportunities that we have had. Over the last couple of months we have connected with several AIDS Service Organizations (ASO's) here in the city. Our goal has been to help them in any way that we can. One of the main things that we have been able to help them with is HIV Rapid Testing. In March we helped do a one day initiative with City Uprising that saw us test 881 people in one day while working with 21 different clinics. Today we are doing a "smaller" scale event in Harlem with the fines people at FACES. The response to the testing has been so overwhelming that the clinic had to ask people to come back later because they did not have enough staff to keep up with the number of people.

I am so excited that God is using our church in this way. I really think that the church can be involved in seeing an end come to the HIV/ AIDS pandemic here in this country and around the world.

I Love My Son

Here is a video Ezra and I made for his grandparents a few weeks ago. As I watched it this morning it reminded me of how much I love him. Parenting has changed my perspective on so much of life. It is making me stop and enjoy each moment that I have.

"Has Science Disproved Christianity?"

Tough Questions- Week 5, Answers to Your Questions

Question 1: What does deliverance mean?

Answer: In the Bible there is one primary use for the word deliverance and it has to do with God delivering us or rescuing us from sin/ evil. Matthew 6:13 says "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." This is a reference from the model prayer in which Jesus said we should pray and ask God to "deliver" us from evil.

Through out the NT Jesus is portrayed as the deliverer who would come and rescue His people as the messiah. We see that Jesus delivered us from the "bondage" of sin through His sacrifice on the cross.

Question 2: What does it mean when the Bible says God is coming soon? The word “soon” means for us something that will happen in a short amount of time, but what does it mean when the Bible uses it?

Answer: The first thing always to take into account whenever you are reading anything is its context. When reading the Bible the two primary contexts to take into account are the grammatical and historical, among others. The grammar focus on the text what comes before and after, and the historical aspect inspects what the words meant at that time. Another issue to bring forth is weather it is being used as a figure of speech. So the answer to both questions is all a matter of context and in order to give a more specific answer the text that you are referring to would need to be studied.


Question 3: The bible also touches on the timing of the end times and that wants to wait so that more people would come to know Him. Can you expand on God’s sadness that not all will come to know Him? And just how deep his mercy is?

The clear teaching of the scripture says that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16)." This helps to know that God's desire if for all people to know Him and find salvation in Him. The other thing that we know from scripture is the we "do not know the day or the hour of Christs return (Matthew 24:36)." So, what does this mean for us. We need to be faithful in sharing the love and good news of Jesus with everyone we come into contact with. We don't know who will come to faith in Him no more than we know when He is going to return or we will die. Our faithful duty is to make him known to everyone that we can.

Question 4: Eph. 4:11 states "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." Are al of the appointed ministries or gifts done away with or just some like apostle and prophets. If yes, why some and not all, and if all still exist how doe we identify them? As well, how do they all work together in the body of Christ?

Answer: I don't think we see clear evidence from the scripture that any of these gifts have gone away competely. I think it is possible to say that the with assurance that the function of all of these gifts still exists in the church today. For instance, the term Apostle in the New Testament represents a couple of things. First, an Apostle was one who was a disciple of Jesus who physically saw Jesus. Now we know that specific role/ person does not exist any more. But the function of the apostolic gift still exists. Paul was an apostle (1 Cor. 9). He was the first missionary of the church and was largely responsible for seeing churches started all over the Roman empire. So, do we still have missionaries and church planters today who are filling an apostolic function? Absolutely!

How do you know if you have a specific gift? I think you will know your gifts by being a part of the church. They will be discerned over time by your involvement. Others will see the gifts that you possess and will encourage those gifts in you.

On a practical note, if you would like to take a spiritual gift inventory. Please email me at aaron@gallerychurch.com and I will send you a workbook that will help you assess your God given gifts.

Tough Questions- Week 5, Answers to Your Questions

Over the next day or so I will be answering a few of the questions presented to me during our "Tough Questions" Series. This first question I am answering, surprisingly, was asked a lot. It is not really a "Tough Question" but more of a clarification on how The Gallery Church operates and cooperates.

Question: What denomination is the Gallery Church?

Answer: Local churches can best promote the cause of Jesus Christ by cooperating with one another. This church is operated in an independent manner and is governed by a board of overseers/elders and a personnel and finance team, yet we work in cooperation with the Baptist Convention of New York, the International Mission Board and North American Mission Board in an effort to best fulfill our mission to “display the greatness of God to the world.” We also cooperate with interdenominational fellowships on a voluntary independent basis.
Acts 15:36,41; 16:5; I Corinthians 16:1; Galatians 1:1-3; Revelation 1:4,10,11

Tough Questions- Week 5, Dr. Albert Mohler

Yesterday was week 5 of our Tough Questions series. The question we asked yesterday was; "Does God send People to Hell? I have posted the video of Dr. Al Mohler's response to this question.




Several of you had questions yesterday. I will be posting those later this week.