Managing the Church
The goal of this section is to lay forth to you suggestions from God's Word and from our pastoral experiences on how to effectively run a church. "If we are to communicate the Christian faith effectively, therefore, we must know and understand the thought-forms of our own generation." - Francis A. Schaeffer (Escape From Reason)
What makes a church grow? The main, significant factor over all else of why churches succeed is this one point: they were centered upon Christ as LORD! They were not centered on a personality, a vision, a denomination, an emerging paradigm, or a set of trends.
Goal-Setting Strategies and Budgeting Ideas
Goals are very important to setting up objectives! Goals are also are crucial for targeting opportunities and action plans, and strategizing on going from one point to another in personal life as well as ministry. Goals are tools to assist growth and to better our call to Christ and our service to one another. However, goals are not the focus, nor are they...
Designing Constant Meeting and Action Plans
Every church has meetings. So how should we do them? Some are formal. Others are leisurely and informal. Some are very skilled, with strict rules of order and procedures laid out so specifically that the meeting is the ministry.
First of all, Christianity is not a ranch where we hire hands to work the spread. Rather, Christianity is an action-driven adventure of faith, where we each help to build one another up and cooperatively do the work that Christ gives us.
Leading the Church in the Midst of Chaos
Motives and desires all at a convergence and many without an eye to the Word or an ear to the Spirit! So…what does this have to do with the problems of the Church?
The Importance of Modeling Character
We can model the character of Christ by the faith we show in our obedience to His Word. What we see in Christ is our model of how we integrate or relate to people with whom we have relationships.
What We Need to Learn for Today's Church
In application, our faith and ministry efforts are like a working fishing net. Our lives are interwoven with that of others by God as we crisscross with them in life.
We need to beware of failing to hear the call of our Lord because of the noise of our will. Being set apart for the Gospel is to be totally at the disposal of our Lord and Master.
What happens when we go wrong and what we can do?
The slope upon which we slip into a Church of Perfidy is the hill of compromise, where we weaken our beliefs and doctrines, and fail to love. This can easily happen if we fail to apply Christ and His guidelines to our lives.
The Simple Problem of Most Churches is…
To say it flat out, the problems our churches face are not so much how we do things; it is how we are! The problem is not what we do in our worship services; it is how we treat the people that go to our services...
Focusing on Our Own Will and Desires over the Mission of the Church
The best way to destroy what God desires is to trade in His purpose for our purpose, or to push aside the truths of Scriptures and what a church is, and replace it with our own trends, whims, and reasoning.
Pastor and Elders refusing to adhere to the purpose of the Church
It amazes me how quickly we Christians get caught up with programs, new ideas, and putting out the fires of personal conflict, spinning our wheels but never giving full attention to what we are all about.
The Unwillingness to Forgive One Another
If you want to be successful as a church you must be willing and able to Forgive. And… real forgiveness takes us beyond our hurts!
A Healthy church needs to develop an immune system to resist disease, else the church will get sick and perhaps even die. We do not mean the diseases of viruses, such as whooping cough, but ones that are even more destructive to our soul and future in eternity!
