Tag: Growing the church

Man dressed as Jesus warmly greeting young children with backpacks outside a school entrance

Opening Gospel Doors

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“Jesus said, ‘Leave the little children alone, and don’t try to keep them from coming to me, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'” (Matthew 19:14 CSB – Read the chapter)

For the last couple of Fridays now we have been talking about various things that have resulted in the church I pastor being in the position that it is. We are growing. There is life and momentum and excitement everywhere you look right now. New families are connecting regularly, and most of them are young and with young kids. It really is a fun season. But it isn’t a season that has arrived overnight. Things have been slowly building in this direction for several years. There have been several decisions the church has made along the way that have contributed in important ways toward what we are experiencing. Exploring some of these with you is why I’ve started this series. We have looked at two so far – eating together and clarifying our identity – today, let’s take a look at a third one: getting into our local school.

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Large group of people gathered outdoors near a church with hands raised worshipping at sunset

Knowing Who You Are

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“For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah‬ ‭29‬:‭11‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

When I was in seminary, I had to take two different leadership classes in my third and final year. I didn’t want to take them. They were a required part of the curriculum. Throughout that journey I struggled more than once with whether or not my path was going to lead in a circle back to the academy, or if I was bound for the local church. The local church had pretty well gotten the nod at that point, but I was far more drawn to my theology and biblical studies classes than anything else. Taking two leadership classes was about the last thing I had in mind. One of them in particular was going to make us do lots of group work which I hated the thought of even more than taking the class in the first place. Wouldn’t you know it, what I learned in that class has probably had more of an impact on my ministry since than what I learned in just about any other class. As we continue our conversation this week about the things that are contributing to my church’s growth right now, let me tell you about what it was.

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Standing on Giants

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This Memorial Weekend, we are talking about the church. Specifically, we are talking about the kind of church that we are and how we came to be this church. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t all because of those in this current generation. We are the result of much hard work and dedication by those who came before us. If we stand, we stand on their shoulders. Celebrate all of this with me and spend some time reflecting on where you are with the church and where perhaps you should be.

Standing on Giants

I am a pastor. I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to very many of you. That’s my job. It’s my calling. A job and a calling, though, are somewhat different from a passion. Hopefully they all intersect in a beautiful harmony that brings joy and fulfillment to your life, but bills tend to demand payment whether we’ve hit that mark or not, so they don’t always. Now, as it turns out, I’m also pretty passionate about many of the parts of pastoring, but the two that fire me up more than anything else are teaching and writing. As such, I’m always on the lookout for an idea. The thing about ideas, though, is that you find them all over the place. Sometimes they are in the places you expect, but sometimes you stumble across them where you would have never thought to look before. And then there are the times when they just hit you totally out of the blue. A little over a week ago, an idea hit me completely out of the blue, and I knew that I needed to write about it. I’d like to share some of that with you this morning. 

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A diverse group of people singing and reading from books outdoors near a church building

A Community Supporting Itself

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“But you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching. Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith, love, and endurance. In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands, so that God’s word will not be slandered. In the same way, encourage the young men to be self-controlled in everything. Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching. Your message is to be sound beyond reproach, so that any opponent will be ashamed, because he doesn’t have anything bad to say about us.” (Titus 2:1-8 CSB – Read the chapter)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the church this week. I mean, more than normal. Being a pastor, I’m thinking about the church all the time, but this week has been a bit different. I’ve got some ideas rolling around in my head this morning, and I’m going to take just a minute to start to flesh some of them out here. I had thought about writing about the new Punisher special from Marvel on Disney+, but there just wasn’t much to say there. This idea, though, has been nagging at me for a couple of days now. It will probably be explored even further as my sermon for next Sunday, but this will just give you a bit of a preview of coming attractions. I’m thinking today about what makes a church strong and impactful over time. The answer is Jesus, of course, but it’s also more than that. Let me explain what I mean.

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Morning Musing: Ephesians 4:15-16

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“But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ. From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

My church publishes a newsletter each month. Our faithful office manager puts it together, prints it out, puts mailing labels on them, carts them to the post office, and out they go. It’s old school, I’ll admit, but it’s mostly working. I think we send out somewhere north of 200 of them. It’s a lot of work and some expense, but if we reduced the number of hard copies that we put in the mail by the number of folks who would almost assuredly be just fine with an electronic-only version it would actually cost us more to keep sending the smaller number to the folks who really do want the paper version because of the way bulk postage rates work. So, we keep sending them out. This month I was able to just brag on the church to the church because there have been so many things to celebrate lately. I’m awfully proud of this group of believers. They are a special bunch indeed. Here’s what I had to say to them.

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