If we discover God's rhythms and live more in sync with God’s heartbeat, we believe a natural result will be to enjoy growth in many ways. We will grow in our knowledge of Jesus; we will grow in favor with the community; we will grow in sites we haven’t thought of yet; and the Lord will add to our numbers.
To engage in the life-giving and life-changing ministry envisioned here we need an organization and a facility that are as flexible and life supporting as we are. Our current building limits our ministry. It is too small and too inflexible to support our current needs. We sometimes limit our ministry based on our facility. Over the next few years we will be need to participate in significant building revisions to support the needs of the church God is calling us to be. Similarly our current organization is based on the model of a Program Church and to support larger numbers of worshipers we will need a different model which likely includes a second called pastor.
How much soil preparation do we need before we call our next pastor? Or do we just sit around and call a super-pastor to do it all for us?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
Hey, these are really thoughtful posts, Steve. Great work here - too bad others are not interacting...
Hopefully lots of people read without commenting. There's probably a way to track traffic on a blog - but I haven't figured it out yet.
Hi. I read all of the posts. They are very thought provoking. I do believe we are being called as a congregation to grow and to change. In fact, I believe as Christians we are always faced with this challenge. Being the hands and feet of Christ in the world requires constant growth and adaptation in order to meet the evolving needs of those we are directed to serve. It seems evident from the final post (the one about the SBNRs) that the church as a whole my need to undergo a paradigm shift in order to reach out to all those who are hungering spiritually. Maybe the move away from a program focused ministry is part of that shift. I know we are facing space limitations at this time. I just don't know if a significant building project is the only answer. I believe we need to think creatively about space utilization as well as about our ministries. Maybe more of what we do needs to happen outside of our building. Is it possible to move parts of our ministry out into the community and away from our property? I wonder sometimes what it would mean to be a church without walls. I don't have any complete or perfect answers; these are just some questions that are on my heart.
I do read the blog as it is part of my RSS feed. I have not felt led to comment yet, though.
If you need assistance setting up a site counter, I can do it quite easily. Then you can get daily or weekly data on visitors. Just let me know.
Tess,
Regarding building revisions - maybe the word "significant" is not a good one. Just looking around I'd say even a decision to not build anything would still require quite a bit of rennovation just to clean up and keep up what we've got now.
One current challenge is we're hearing that people really like to get together for meals, fellowship, and worship. Our current fellowship hall doesn't come close to sitting everyone.
Some creative ideas might include having all-church events at a completely different site - like a school perhaps.
PS. I'm not sure what "SBNRs" means.
Post a Comment