This week is our annual Midwinter Retreat in Newport. It’s a time when pastors and ministry leaders and their spouses carve out time to take a deep breath and reconnect—with each other and God.  Our speaker this year is Rick McKinley. He is the founding pastor of Imago Dei in Portland, Oregon. With our theme being “Soul Care” Rick has challenged us to focus on Jesus and commit to a ministry shaped by the cross.

LET’S TALK

Here are some great quotes we’ve collected from our time together with Rick:

• When we think we have confidence, that’s when Satan begins to sift us.
• When we think we got it, probably something else has taken over in our lives
• If we are leaders who aren’t leading in faith and intimacy with Christ, what are we leading in?
• Jesus evaluates us on our relationship to Him
• We would do well to let Jesus crucify our ministries. Am I thinking more about the cost to myself in this ministry than what it cost Him?
• Two things that we need to guard against in our relationship with Christ:
  1. Self-confidence
  2. Self-preservation
• We have a cross-shaped calling.
• One of the tragedies of the North American church is that we haven’t noticed when we have come to the point of asking God to bless our ideas rather than following after his ideas.
• All three temptations of Christ were to try to get around the cross.
• The good news is that it’s not about faltering, but finishing.
• Cross-shaped ministries are what the world is aching for and what Satan fears
• Jesus puts his cry into our hearts so that we can authentically cry, “Abba, Father.”
• Success and failures can never be measured from 1 to 10. It is measured by our relationship with Jesus and dependence on Him.
• We need a theology of the ordinariness of life. It is the sacred stuff that God is using to shape and transform us.
• God allows us to be wounded to expand our hearts.
• The path to maturity is coming to the end of our own power and trusting in God to work out His salvation in our lives.

BEFORE YOU GO

Soul Care begins and ends with Jesus. We need to spend extended time with Him, just to seek His face. We need to know that we are loved by Him and minister from our confidence in Him and not ourselves.