Wayne Cordeiro: Problems and Passion

What does it mean to connect everything to a soul?

It’s the idea that everything we do is vested in people’s eternity. At New Hope, we try to connect everything to a soul so it gives purpose to our activities. We’ve got to be an eternally focused church—not externally, not internally—but eternally. And then everything we do will have that resonance of heaven in it. If we don’t have an opportunity to somehow connect to the soul of someone—and I’m not saying to be belligerent or overly religious—then it’s not something we pursue as a church.

Based on those criteria, have you had to cut a ministry or program?

Yeah, we have pruned quite a few of our activities because they don’t quite end up in an opportunity or at least a good amount of opportunities for people’s lives to be changed. Now, we have to understand some of the stuff we do, our activities, is to take care of the saints within our embrace. So we’ve got to take care of the widows, the orphans, the distressed. But that must not be what we’re all about exclusively. Again, it’s a means to something far more eternal, connecting that soul to Jesus Christ. So if it’s not happening or if another group can fulfill that activity, then we parcel it off to another group to do it. Otherwise, we will be doing all of these wonderfully benevolent activities but miss the core of why we exist.

I’ll give you an example. We started sponsoring a program at a local culinary school, working with underprivileged students. It was great. The teacher was fabulous and connected with all of these kids, got them off the streets and into this program. The only problem was that he couldn’t teach the Gospel or say anything about God. We came to a point where we said, “Although this is wonderful and benevolent, this can’t be what we’re all about.” So we spun it off to a 501(c)3 organization to do the program while we refocused our attention on connecting things to a soul. It’s really easy to misunderstand what I’m saying. People will go, “Bah humbug on that guy; he’s not really there to help people. Jesus would help them.”

For some people, it looks narrow-minded, but to others it’s called being focused on what God has asked you to do. Now if any of those students came to our church, we would work with them in their relationship with Christ here. But we couldn’t keep sponsoring something that had no end in Christ.

Some people would say that program was an opportunity for your church to build bridges and relationships that ultimately through prayer would have brought someone to Christ.

That would be a fine answer if it were indeed reality and not used as a rationalization. We have to be honest! And often Christians are not honest people. We disguise and masquerade honesty with rationalizations so we can keep doing what makes us feel good. We use scriptural explanations to exonerate ourselves. That is why I go back to the metric and say, “OK, how many? How many sheaves are in the barn?” We tend to say, “Oh man, was I out there! I talked to the grain, I sang to the grain, I loved on the grain.” No, we’ve got to harvest the wheat! There is only one group that has been given the awesome and amazing privilege and responsibility of touching people’s souls for an eternity. And if we don’t do it, who will?

Wayne Cordeiro
Wayne Cordeirowww.mentoringleaders.com

Wayne Cordeiro is the founding pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, Hawaii with over 14,500 in weekend attendance. New Hope is also listed as one of the top ten most innovative churches in America with Outreach Magazine listing them as one of the “top five churches to learn from.”

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