It’s weird and fun being on the other side of local church leadership… it is making for some helpful and new insights. Through my new experiences being an attender at local churches I have been able to identify a few basic items that make a for a healthy and successful church. Of these, probably one of the most basic and controllable aspects is friendliness.
It doesn’t matter what size the church. Big or Small, it is easy to be friendly. However, most churches fail this simple test. Leaders and regular attenders are too concerned about their needs, jobs, and preparations to stop and connect relationally with people… the very people they so desire to reach and have stay at their churches.
If you attend a church or lead a church, here is something VERY SIMPLE that you can do to help your church grow (spiritually, communally, numerically)…. Take the 15 minutes before the service starts and walk/talk through the worship center. Say ‘hi’ to people. Engage them in 3-5 min. conversations. Look for faces you don’t recognize or don’t know very well (don’t talk with your regular ‘friends’). If you could just get just 2% of your congregation to lead on this level I am confident you would experience a whole new attitude in your church within 2 months.
well… i can officially say we are getting closer to making a city choice for our next phase of life & ministry. (i know that isn’t quite a certainty.) I spent tuesday through friday am in Seattle with Brent from Orchard Group. Since Seattle would be new territory for Orchard, he & Paul Williams met with George [CEA] & Jim [E. 91st St.] developing a potential partnership for this new work. The 5 of us plus Dean sat and talked Wed. morning about ministry, churches and the area. After that Brent & I (some with Dean too) spent the better part of 2 days looking at the city neighborhoods for potential locations.
Jen & I have been praying for God’s peace & direction. We began this journey with a real desire to be open to where he would have us to go. The only real parameters that we put on our prayers were that:
- it would be out of the desert
- it would not be in the mid-west
- it would be a city in need of new churches
we will spend more time in prayer, but we are edging closer to landing on Seattle. We still plan to move at the end of the school year and hope to have the whole summer to explore our new land before the kids start their new schools and we buckle down to the new church biz.
keep checking back here; i hope to have some updates on the partners involved and the people who will be joining us in this endeavor.
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