Written by Trey Morgan has a great post over on his Blog that I would encourage you to read. It is called “The Top Ten Ways Tot Get Your Preacher To Quit.”
To read it, Click Here.
Posts in category Church
Good Publicity
Our church received some good, free publicity today. The Ashland Times-Gazette did a nice story on our new building.
To read the article, go HERE and scroll down.
Going to Church
I have a question and I would like the input of my readers.
How and when did church attendance become the defining characteristic of Christianity? Of course, it shouldn’t be — but in many ways, it is. Think about it: We generally assess someone’s “faithfulness” by their attendance record. We try to persuade unbelievers to “come to church” with us. Most, if not all of our activities involve meeting together at the “church building.” We go to great lengths and spend a fair amount of money to advertise our address and meeting times. We make a big production out of our meetings by dressing up in nice clothes. Try to change one of your weekly meetings to an activity serving the community (away from your “church building”) and see what kind of opposition you face in your congregation — people will think you’ve gone “soft” if you suggest cancelling a “church service.”
Shouldn’t “church service” be a verb instead of a noun?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it is important for believers to meet together on a regular basis, for many reasons. But I don’t hear Jesus saying that His followers will be known by their meetings or their attendance record. It seems we should be known more for our words and activities that take place away from “church.”
If you took away the Sunday morning assembly, what would be left for most churches? Isn’t following Jesus about much more than a Sunday assembly? How did it become the end-all of our faith?
Would You Be Missed?
Another blogger I read regularly has posted this question, and I reposted it here to get input from my readers.
If your church vanished from your community, would the community know it was gone? What kind of hole would you leave? What, if anything, would the community miss?
Here’s another question that a commenter left on that post: If you were no longer attending your current congregation, what would go undone? How long would it take before others noticed you were gone?
It’s been said, “When you die, you either fill a hole or you leave a hole.”
What do you think???
Fruitful?
Tonight in Bible Class, we learned how important olives (and olive oil) were in Jesus’ day. A community that had several fruitful olive trees would be blessed. A community with no olive trees, or unfruitful olive trees would be a hurting community.
It stands to reason that a community with a fruitful church would definitely be blessed. How is our church doing? Is our community better because our church is here? Is our church a blessing to the people of this community? Or do we just exist for “us”? I believe we need to ask those questions and answer them honestly.
“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” –Jesus
How is your church doing?
Change or Die
In a recent blog post, Patrick Mead made the following statement concerning churches that die:
“While they wanted things to change, they were not willing to change. they held to their traditions and programs, answering questions the culture was no longer asking.”
I can’t seem to get that sentence out of my mind. It is just so true. And it needs to be heard.
I preach for a church that is rather traditional — not overly so, but more traditional than we should be (we are considered liberal by some other churches in the vicinity). There are certainly some folks in our church who don’t want things to change. They couldn’t care less if we impact our community, reach young families, or make a difference in the lives of hurting people. As long as we sing the songs they like, do church like we’ve always done it, and have a preacher who keeps them interested (and finishes on time) — they are happy and content. They just want to go on to their mansion on the hilltop in relative comfort.
Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I firmly believe that most of the folks in our church want things to change — i.e. they would like for us to reach some young families and make a difference in our community. The problem is, they don’t want anything at church to change in order to make that happen. The want to sing their songs, do church in the old familiar ways, and remain in their nice, warm, secure comfort zones. These are good people and I dearly love them. But they are overly attached to a certain way of doing church.
Don’t get me wrong — I understand the need to be sensitive. Change can be difficult and should never be shoved down people’s throats. And I have certainly been guilty of doing that very thing (to disasterous results). For change to take place, it must be handled correctly and done slowly.
But how do you get people to see that if things are going to change, they must change? That if we’re going to reach out, grow and make a difference in our community, that we simply can’t just stay the course and keep doing what we’ve always done? How do we help them to understand that if we don’t wake up and make some needed changes, our days are numbered?
I’m open to any and all suggestions.
We are currently building a new church building. I would hate to see a “For Sale” sign in front of that building in a few years because we were more interested in our own comfort than doing the work of Jesus and having an impact on our community.
The seven words of a dying church are: “We’ve Never Done It That Way Before.”
Worthy of Honor?
Since October is Pastor Appreciation Month, let me share an article my wife wrote for Wineskins Magazine a few years ago. It deals with the work of a Minister. My wife is certainly qualified to talk about this, being both a Minster’s wife AND a Minister’s daughter.
Read the article Here.
October is Pastor Appreciation Month
For those of you who are not aware, October is Pastor Appreciation Month. Don’t know what to do for your Pastor or Minister? Here are some suggestions from the Pastors Retreat Network:
12 Ways to Appreciate Your Minister
When we look at our minister what do we see? A spiritual giant? Someone who can go it alone? Someone who works a day and a half a week? A servant of the congregation? Someone who does it all?
The truth is that ministers are real people with real families, dreams, needs, desires and gifts. And like all of us, they shine best in situations where they are appreciated and supported. Here are a dozen ways you can bring out the best in your minister:
- Write a note of appreciation.
- Pray for your minister regularly.
- Stop the rumor mill.
- Invite him out to lunch, golfing, or some other shared interest, without an agenda.
- Offer to babysit the kids so your minister and his spouse can have an evening together, even better, offer them a gift certificate to a restaurant they enjoy.
- Honor his day off – allow time for rest, personal renewal and family time.
- In times of loss, offer sympathy, care and practical help.
- Consider holidays and other family days – if the minister is far from their family of origin, invite them to your celebration – no strings attached.
- Ask him how you can help and then follow through.
- Tell him what you’ve learned from their sermon.
- Go to http://parsonage.org/cam/index.cfm for ideas on how to celebrate your minister during Pastor Appreciation Month.
- Consider a sabbatical time for your minister and find a way to provide one as needed.
Attention Preachers!
I just finished reading Communicating For a Change by Andy Stanley — an excellent book on preaching/speaking and sermon prep. I’ve been preaching full-time for almost 13 years, and this book has changed the way I prepare and deliver my sermons (well, I should say that I am beginning to put the principles into practice — it won’t happen overnight). This old dog is trying to learn some new tricks.
The basic premise is that we preachers put too many points in our sermons and try to cover too much ground. Stanley suggests that you focus your entire sermon on one point, and hammer that over and over again. The people listening to you are much more likely to remember what you said if you focus on one point than if you gave them 5 points (alliterated, of course). There is much more to it, but that’s a quick overview.
The first half of the book is just a story illustrating how one preacher learned the system. I found this section to be little more than filler — and you won’t miss anything if you skip it. But the second half of the book explains the process, and is very practical. I wish this book had been available when I was in college, or at least when I began preaching.
If you want to be more effective in your preaching and speaking, get this book. I give it my highest recommendation.
Pew Warmers
Not long ago, I wrote about “Safe and Comfortable Christianity” (read the post Here). I conlcuded that piece by stating: “There are many spiritual gifts listed in Scripture – many ways in which you can be involved in the work of Jesus in this world. Being a Pew Warmer is not one of them.”
I want to revisit that, because it is apparent that this is more of a problem than I had thought. I’ve seen it in every church I’ve worked with in my 12+ years of full-time ministry — people who are content to sit back and let about 20% of the congregation do almost all of the work. People who are quick to complain about the church, but not so quick to do anything to make it better.
The problem recently hit me right between the eyes. My wife serves on the Education Committee at our church, and they are currently getting things ready for the fall quarter. This means lining up teachers for the children’s classes, and they are having a difficult time finding some people who are willing to teach (other than the few who teach constantly and are in danger of getting burned-out). We have a congregation that has an average Sunday morning attendance of about 240. And we can’t seem to find a handful of folks willing to teach our kids. That is just disgraceful. Oh, we hear lots of excuses and lots of explanations. I could understand if someone was already involved in ministry, but most of the people giving excuses are not involved. They are just Pew Warmers.
To be completely honest with you….. I wish they would go warm someone else’s pew. Because not only do they refuse to get involved in ministry, but they are usually the first ones to complain when something happens that they don’t like, or when they think the church (or the elders, or the ministers) is not doing what they think it should be doing.
My wife is about as frustrated as she can be. She is over-involved (almost to the point of burn-out). She teaches children’s classes, volunteers in the nursery, coordinates Wednesday night fellowship meals in the summer, heads-up our Wonderful Wednesday program, does bulletin boards, and serves on the Education Committee. And when she goes to ask someone to teach a children’s class for one quarter, she gets responses like, “Nah.” Or, “I’m too busy.” How we long to have folks come up to us and say, “What can I do to serve? What can I do to help? How can I contribute? How can I serve?”
If any of you who are wiser and more experienced have suggestions and/or solutions to this problem, I would love to hear them.
To any members of our congregation who may be reading this — please don’t come to me and complain about our church, our leaders, our ministries, etc. — unless you’re also planning to get involved and work positively to make things better. If you’re just coming to complain, I don’t want to hear it. You’re wasting my time.
Recent Comments