Credibility

If you weren't at McKinney Church on Sunday, you missed hearing a guy who might just be the best preacher you've never heard of. Steve Bateman is the pastor of First Bible Church in Decatur, Alabama. He was the Singles Pastor at McKinney back in the early 90s and was back in town to do our men's conference.

For the entire weekend, he talked about "credibility" from 2 Timothy. This morning he wrapped up by talking about credibility from 2 Corinthians. If you download sermons or podcasts from time to time, it would be a good one to download or watch online. Powerful stuff.

In short here was Steve's thesis for the weekend:

Character + Competency = Credibility.

If you want to have credibility with anyone about anything, you have to know what you're talking about and show what you're talking about.

If you want to be really credible, you get that over time:

Character + Competency + Time = Strong Credibility.

But if you want to be enormously credible; the kind of person everyone turns to, you need to allow God to add something else to the mix:

Character + Competency + Time + Trouble = Enormous Credibility

None of us likes it, none of us wants it, none of us understands it, but when we come out on the other side God will always use trouble in conjunction with Character, Competency, and Time to establish the credibility of people who point to Him.

Thanks to Steve Bateman for a really great challenge this Sunday. I can't wait to read his book.