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 Sermon Thought: "God Makes Room for Oddballs
(And We're All Oddballs)"

The Top Ten Ways to Turn a Complainer
into a Positive Person

Things Every Minister Needs to Understand About People

Ten Commandments for an Associate Minister

In Acts 10, Peter receives a vision from God of a large sheet descending from heaven, overflowing with unclean mammals, reptiles, and birds. According to Leviticus 11, the animals that were on the sheet were probably pigs, camels, rabbits, vultures, bats, ants, beetles, lizards, rats, and snakes. They were unclean, but God told Peter to rise and eat! To Peter, such foods were not only distasteful, but also an abomination. The voice from heaven said, "Do not call anything unclean that I have cleansed."

Peter was shaken to the core, but still had another jolt - a group of "unclean" Gentiles wanted to join the band of Jesus followers.

What did God have against the vulture, the catfish or the ostrich that He would declare them unclean? Besides the health concerns of certain foods, certain animals were not "fit". The word "fit" is the best English equivalent of the Hebraic word "kosher". God said that certain animals were unfit. Why? In each case it seems that the unclean animals were an anomaly. Since fish are supposed to have scales and fins, eels and shellfish do not qualify. Birds are meant to fly, and thus the ostrich and emu do not qualify. Land animals walk on all fours, but do not crawl legless like a snake. Each unclean animal was abnormal.

What was God saying? No oddballs allowed! God deserves the best. But the list of undesirables was also extended to people. Those with damaged bodies or damaged family lines failed to qualify. No oddballs allowed. People with skin diseases or sores, anyone who had touched a corpse, women with an issue of blood - all were unclean. The list of oddballs is long!

But Jesus came! And rung by rung, He began to dismantle the ladder of hierarchy that had marked the approach to God. He invited defectives, sinners, aliens, and Gentiles to God's banquet table. Luke 8 records three incidents of Jesus overturning the Jewish categories of clean and unclean. First Jesus sails into a region of Gentiles and heals a naked madman and makes him a missionary. Next Jesus is touched by a woman with a twelve year old hemorrhage, a "female problem", that disqualified her from worshipping. From there, Jesus proceeds to a home where a corpse was lying and raises up the young girl.

Jesus reversed the process: rather than becoming contaminated, He made the other person whole. The Lord went to the oddballs - those with no hope. And we're all oddballs! The Lord made access possible to the banquet table for all those who could not come before. Further, He did not cancel the "hallowing" process, but changed its source. We ourselves can be God's agents of holiness. In a sick world, we can be a source of holiness. The sick and maimed are for us, not hot spots of contagion, but reservoirs of God's mercy. Like Jesus, we can help make the "unclean" clean. God loves oddballs. He looks for them. And we're all oddballs. Thank God He has opened the access to the throne.

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1. Most complainers are oblivious to the fact that they whine or complain as much as they do. By not pointing it out, you're tolerating it.
2. Insist that people change their complaint into a clear request. This is incredibly easy to do! Just remind them to do it, the moment you hear them going down that path.
3. Ask them to become a completely positive person when with you. They'll look at you funny, but it's better than putting up with complaints.
4. Find out what is really bothering them. A complaint is usually a symptom.
5. Hear every complaint from people as a way to make changes. This is more than a mind set - it's really an effective way to help people change if you'll just hear the complaints as a person wanting to change.
6. Stop complaining yourself. When you stop, others stop.
7. Let people know that you don't do well with complaints. "Bob, I'm so bad at hearing complaints. Let's focus on something that you're excited about, Okay?"
8. Surround yourself only with naturally positive people. Sometimes it's just not worth trying to change people.
9. Focus the other person on an outcome that they really want. Try saying something like, "If you could have it exactly as you want it, tell me what that would look like."
10. Look surprised when they start complaining. Say something like: "Why, Bro. George, I never knew you to be a complainer! This must really be bad!"

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 Things Every Minister Needs to Understand About People

 Knowing what people need and want is the key to understanding them. And if you can understand them, you can influence them and impact their lives in a positive way. Listed are five things about understanding people:

1. Everybody Wants to Be Somebody. There isn't a person in the world who doesn't have the desire to be someone, to have significance. Even the least ambitious and unassuming person wants to be regarded highly by others. Once that piece of information becomes a part of your everyday thinking, you'll gain incredible insight into why people do the things they do. And if you treat every person you meet as if he or she was the most important person in the world, you'll communicate that he or she is somebody - to you.
2. Nobody Cares How Much You Know Until He Knows How Much You Care. To be an influencer, you have to love people before you try to lead them. The moment that people know that you care for and about them, the way they feel about you changes. If you want to help others and become a person of influence, keep smiling, sharing, giving, and turning the other cheek.
3. Everybody Needs Somebody. Contrary to popular belief, there are no such things as self-made men and women. Everybody needs somebody to come alongside and help. If you understand that, are willing to give to others and help them, and maintain the right motives, their lives and yours will change.
4. Everybody Can Be Somebody When Somebody Understands and Believes in Him or Her. Once you understand people and believe in them, they really can become somebody. And it doesn't take much effort to help other people feel important. Little things, done deliberately at the right time, can make a big difference. When was the last time you went out of your way to make people feel special, as if they were somebody? The investment required on your part is totally overshadowed by the impact it makes on them.
5. Anybody Who Helps Somebody Influences a Lot of Bodies. The final thing you need to understand about people is that when you help one person, you're really impacting a lot of other people. What you give to one person overflows into the lives of all the people that person impacts. It even impacts you because when you help others and your motives are good, you always receive more than you can ever give.

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1. One of the biggest jobs of an associate minister is to get the people to accept "you" without taking one iota from the honor and position of the senior minister.
2. Work constantly to get the people to look forward to your call in its own right - and not simply as a substitute for the senior minister's call.
3. Accept the fact that you are an associate or assistant and yet not relegate yourself, mentally, into an inferior attitude. Work in your own right.
4. Take all criticisms of the church or minister in strict confidence, even though it may not have been given in that way, and keep the senior minister aware of such criticism. He deserves to know.
5. Defend the minister at all costs. You must strive to unite the church, not divide it.
6. Be prepared for any emergency. Any pastoral duty becomes yours if the senior minister becomes incapacitated.
7. Always give the senior minister first chances to make certain calls. He is the shepherd of the flock. Be sure he knows of events that he may not be aware of - tragedy, death, etc.
8. Inform the senior minister immediately of any serious illness you discover which he may not be aware of. He, through his own knowledge, or from you, should know everything about the people at all times.
9. Try to compliment the senior minister. He is human, and yet must be all things to all people. There are some places he might be weak; strive to help him by making yourself stronger at these points of weakness.
10. Remember that you are not only serving a congregation, you are serving the Master, and you are serving another minister.

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