If you spend too much time researching, thinking that there’s a perfect system other people are using that you’re missing out on, you’re stuck. There are no perfect systems. The only system you need is the system that helps you get ministry done.
“While it seems many of our church buildings are intact, there are many, many people in our congregations and communities with significant property damage and/or stranded by wash-out roads.” Diocese of Vermont’s Canon to the Ordinary Lynn Bates
Shades of Amos, you say? Or Zacchaeus in Jericho? The plentiful cedars of Solomon’s reign? Tread carefully: those are variants of fig, native to the Middle East – and not quite the same thing as the American sycamore.
Praying had not occurred to me, for I had been too busy defending my position. No one felt comfortable opposing prayer, but I expect I wasn’t the only one who didn’t have much confidence in it just then.
For one thing, churches are populated mostly by middle-class people, who are relatively comfortable. And ministers of these institutions value stability more than mission. We professional leaders are reluctant to do anything that would cause conflict or controversy in our churches, fearing an institutional split — or at the very least, a reduction of gifts to the church.
Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
Get clear about your vision. You can’t be excellent about everything all the time—not without eventually imploding. Be sure, then, that you’re striving toward excellence in the things that actually, truly matter. You can’t know what matters unless your church has a clear understanding of what it’s supposed to be doing—and not doing.
It was amazingly heartening to return and find all this already in progress – it was the natural response for the congregation. It also meant I could walk round the parish and be with people elsewhere.
Business owners and even a church in Middle Tennessee are “breathing a sigh of relief Monday that the NFL lockout is over” according to
This summer, over a thousand children will work in a half-dozen studios creating glass, fiber, music and dance projects inspired by specific cultures chosen each year. The program tries to keep students involved in the arts at a time that schools are cutting back and it has given new life to a once small and aging congregation.