Releasing Your Church

Last week I blogged some initial thoughts taken from a presentation I shared with the leadership of a local church. These church leaders desire to see their smaller church grow, and they requested that I visit with them and share some thoughts on this topic.

I began with a quote from John Kaiser. John makes the following observation in his book, Winning On Purpose.

"According to Lyle Shaller, in the United States there are over 300,000 Protestant congregations, all of them presumably going through the motions of "having church" in one form or another. How many of them are winning the hearts and minds of people in their communities for Jesus Christ? How many of them are even keeping score? How many of them are just enjoying their little volley as an end in itself?" (Abingdon Press, Nashville), 25

I think this struck a chord with these leaders. The reality is that many of our churches are doing just that....enjoying the little volley without really keeping score of how well we are doing in the task of engaging in our mission for the Gospel.

We at Mission Mid-Atlantic are passionate about assisting our pastors and churches in the process of reaching our communities with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am available to share Releasing Your Church with your leaders. We also have other assessment tools to help your church improve its health and increase effectiveness. Let us know how we can help you.

~ Jim

"Releasing Your Church" Presentation

Last night I visited with a pastor and church leaders who want to see their church grow. In my presentation, "Releasing Your Church", I addressed two critical issues for smaller churches that want to grow. I heard Bill Hoyt describe these issues while attending a RED's meeting several months ago.

According to Hoyt, a culture of empowerment, not control, must be established. In addition, a smaller church must become extremely outward, not inward, focused.

This church is already doing some great things through outreach events such as "Community Days." However, they like many churches have difficulty seeing those people actually attending their services and becoming assimilated into the life of the church.

One church leader asked about what kind of events they should have that would reflect an outward focused church. I admitted that this was a hard question for me to answer because I am not familiar with their local culture. Instead, I suggested that it was important to lead their congregation through a process of understanding the difference between inward and outward focus and why this shift is so important.

Do these issues resonate with you? I will write more about these issues in a future post. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts and reflections.

By the way, two excellent books that address the issues mentioned above:

Winning on Purpose, by John Edmund Kaiser (Great resource about church governance)

Effectiveness By the Numbers, by William R. Hoyt (Valuable resource about how to measure results)

~ Jim