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Essentials for Effective Established Churches

I am making these points after thinking about established churches from Thom Rainer’s recent post.  While there is purpose and value in church planting, Rainer is right in thinking that we cannot give up on the established churches, even though leading them poses difficult challenges.  Pastoring a church of any age will be challenging, so instead of complaining, let’s just remember some essentials of leadership as we strive to keep ministry effective. These are my thoughts, and I’m certainly no expert.  What did I miss?  Leave a comment.
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1. Preach the Gospel. The gospel message is needed because it has the power to save people. Established churches sometimes don’t preach the gospel and so they don’t see any transformation and become stagnant country clubs. If we want to see peoples’ lives changed and making a difference in our community, we must proclaim the Gospel, which is the very reason Christ established the church.
2. Love people. People want their pastor to care about them.  The challenge for young pastors especially is that we are often stereotyped into wanting to build up a huge church and do things for our own glory or like what we’ve seen somewhere else. I’m not sure why that is, but I know I’ve run into that. People think the pastor will care more about their ministry and plans, and will forget about loving and actually shepherding people.  I spent the majority of my first year at Central going out and being with our people. Just getting to know them and praying with them– showing them that I genuinely care about them.  As challenging as they can be sometimes, people are the reason God put pastors in place!

Gadgets in the Church? Some Pros and Cons

Technology has greatly aided the church.  

• Pianos are electronic, so the volume can be controlled and different sounds can be used.
• Words can be displayed on screens so hands are free to worship without holding books.
• Dropbox lets everyone who works on files for Sunday’s service to put them in one place to be accessed at one time to prep the screens for a service.
• Computers allow for videos and other media to enhance the message during the service.
• Sermons can be recorded and uploaded online to be listened to whenever someone wants to.
• Church Management Systems allow office workers to handle data and serve people more effectively.

While all of these are great, I am focusing in this post on the use of phones and tablets during a church’s worship service–is it okay?

The reason it’s on my mind is because I’ve had a few conversations recently about this.  So I thought I’d share some pros and cons as I see them, and then suggest some nice resources.  First, let me say that I’m not at all opposed to using phones and tablets in worship because I know how helpful these tools can be.  But there definitely can be some down sides to it.  What I’m sharing here is a mixture of my thoughts and different opinions I’ve read at different times in different places.

Church Tailgating Party- Incredible!

This was our church’s Facebook page status yesterday afternoon:

So last week Pastor Ryan asked in his sermon why we don’t get as passionate about church and Sunday school as we do for ballgames. He said he didn’t see anyone tailgating outside before church talking about the big sermon and all fired up for church. SOOOOO we got the hint and we all decided this week it was time for a tailgate party! We are excited for Sunday School, for worship, for preaching, fellowship, and God’s Word!!! What a great time had by all!

I honestly couldn’t believe what I saw when my family pulled into the parking lot next to the church for our routine Sunday morning.  As we turned in, Nikki said “what are all these people standing outside for?”  My first thought honestly was that there was a fire inside of our building!

But then I realized that a good number of our church people acted on my joking statement in last week’s sermon about our being passionate about Jesus and what we do together on Sunday mornings.  I couldn’t stop talking about this tailgating party with Nikki most of the day yesterday!

This was absolutely incredible for a number of reasons.  Here are a few:

• People listened to a sermon!  Even if it wasn’t the most spiritual part, they still heard
• People kept it a secret all week from me.  Being surprised made it even better.  I’m really surprised that Camma didn’t let it out while working around the office all week!
• It was awesome to see young and old gathering like this holding up signs and wearing church apparel and simply being united together in their excitement of Jesus and our church.
• This was put together in a week and was really well done too.  Seriously.  The signs, the sound system set up outside with music playing, the grill for sausage, the crock pots with breakfast casseroles, the “Jesus Loves Me” stickers everyone seemed to have on their faces.  It was just a lot of fun because everybody took it seriously.
• Nikki and I both agreed how much we appreciated that our church family would do something like this.  They’re a bunch of fun people.
• The morale yesterday morning going into Sunday School and then worship was so great!  There really seemed to be more energy and excitement to be there, just like tailgating at a football game.
• Most people were wearing t-shirts, jeans, and stickers on their face all morning.  It’s nice to relax together.

Pictures of the tailgating party are at the church’s Facebook page.  To my church family– what an incredible way to kick off yesterday!  Thank you for putting the effort into this event and for uniting together for something special like this.

Since I didn’t get the email this week, next week– I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt to preach in…

180 Movie and Abortion

A couple days ago I received an email about the 180 movie. I had a chance to watch this 30 minute documentary by Ray Comfort, a leader of Way of the Master ministries, and I still don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling about it.

It deals with some hard issues.

One- the Holocaust. As a history student in college I enjoyed learning about World War II. My grandfather fought in that war and he liberated concentration camps at the war’s end. He saw this devastating act of hatred by the Nazis. It’s amazing to me that people claim it never happened when there are plenty of people, pictures, and more proof that show it did.

Two- abortion. The act of murdering babies is completely deplorable and it’s sickening to know that it is still legal and still happening much today.

Comfort has been criticized for this documentary, mainly for some people feeling that abortion cannot be compared rightly with the Holocaust. I think Comfort’s response in the article I linked was well said to that criticism.

I wanted to make the 180 Movie known here to encourage you to think about the terror of abortion again. While I saw a positive note this week that federal funding will not go toward it in the new health care plan, we still seem far off as a nation to make abortion illegal again.

If you’ve seen this documentary, what thoughts could you share about it?

Southern Baptist Convention Name Change?

Some of the latest buzz around the Southern Baptist Convention is about possibly changing its name.  Bryant Wright, president of the SBC, has formed a task force to spend a year researching this possibility– the feasibility, legality, need, and implications of such a move.  This move does not mean anything will be done, but we’ll certainly hear more about it in the future.

The most significant reasons I’ve read or heard about for a name change center around the word “Southern.”  The SBC is active outside of the southern states in the US, more than ever.  Some think the name misrepresents all of its churches.  Some argue that someone in New York would not want to join a “Southern” Baptist church.  There is much more to this current debate and this is not the first time a name change has been suggested.

I’m curious to hear the results of the task force’s research.  In the mean time, all SBC churches should not get hung up over this issue, but should be committed to the basic principle of the convention:  we are a missionary convention.  It has always been this way, so let’s do our part now in making Jesus known throughout our towns, states, and the world!

I’ve always said that I’m grateful that we have a convention who is Biblically sound, where the largest current issues are about methodology and not theology.  We’re not debating the ordination of homosexual ministers or whether Jesus is the only way to salvation.

What are your thoughts on a possible name change?

 

 

 

The Baptist Press article of this issue.

Al Mohler’s (president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) thoughts on a possible name change.

Church Updates…

I haven’t written anything here for quite a while!  Much has been happening, some already seen, some not yet.  There will be more updates soon on some of this and more.

• There’s been brainstorming and new plans made for building up our Sunday School ministry.  The next phase of changes will be coming soon.
• Community Groups start this week, so the last few weeks have seen a lot of time going into final planning.
• With Back to Church Weekend this past weekend, there was a lot of time spent trying to reconnect with people we haven’t seen in a while.
• Pastor Jim Mayes, our Associational missionary, preached yesterday in our service.  Even from a wheelchair, Pastor Jim preached a powerful message that was part of a great service.
• Planning is happening for 2012–and that’s a long process of setting priorities and seeking God’s guidance for how He would have us go.

It’s a privilege to be part of God’s work!

Popcorn Festival Day 1 Wrap-Up

This past week has been a blur trying to get things done for the Popcorn Festival outreach out church does.  We provide a Baby Comfort Area for parents to change diapers and nurse if needed.  There’s no other place in the festival to do this, so it’s a great help to people and gives us the chance to talk to many people and share our faith with them.  It has allowed our church to become an asset to our community instead of a liability.

Today I served for a little while and many others from our church were there all day.  Two big conversations happened in that time with people on the sidewalk outside of our space:

Dean works the lemonade stand in front of our area.  I introduced myself to him early in my time there, but later he came back to me and asked me what the million dollar bill was I was holding (a tract we’re using).  I had the opportunity to ask him the “million dollar question”: where will you spend eternity?  Dean was from China and recently moved to America, so we talked a little about how he said China has no belief and that he doesn’t believe in anything.  I was able to share the plan of salvation with him, although he didn’t really respond to it much.  He thanked me for talking with him and went back to his work.

Ryan was a 9th grader who was sharing a lot of how he is learning in school that all religions view Jesus the same. He, a lady from our church, and I had a long conversation about who Jesus is, homosexuality, the Bible, the church, and lots more.

I hope this event is a reminder for our church people that people are willing to talk about matters of faith, and many times they’ll even listen.  Our responsibility as Christians is to tell We’ll hope there are great conversations in the next two days!

There are a few pictures of our space up at the church’s FaceBook page.