Some more thoughts on our congregation and the positive signs of health and strength and maturity that I am witnessing. Here are five more: #6 Service This spring more people than ever stepped forward to get involved in “First Serve” (our program for people who want to get into a ministry). We have a strong […]
Category: Discipleship
Communication | Discipleship | Evangelization | Leadership | Making Church Matter | Stewardship | Team Building
I was thinking today about how healthy and mature our congregation is becoming. I know, I know, that sounds self-congratulatory and prideful. But I think on Father’s Day its OK to be a little proud of the family. No kidding, this is the most mature and healthy Church community I have ever been part of […]
We have been talking about emotional health (the past two messages are available here on our blog as video pod casts). For too long we have delegated “emotional issues” to the therapists office, or, ignored them entirely. Emotional health and spiritual health are inseparably linked and critical to real discipleship. (Peter Scazzero’s book on the […]
As we gathered together with Parish staff and leadership last week we spent some time looking at things we’ve learned from others, especially the very best practices of some of the most successful Churches in America. As an exercise, and for purposes of our current discussion, we identified 7…obviously there are many more, but 7 […]
From Tom This past week we had a strategic planning meeting. We have a great team of people who are helping us look to the future of the Church. At the meeting, one of the members of the team was talking about Pepsi and their strategic planning. He said their simple mission statement is this, […]
From Tom Maturity means taking responsibility for my life, all of it – my thoughts, my feelings, my actions and my decisions. Maturity also means recognizing what I do not control, what is not my responsibility. Christian maturity means taking responsibility for what I do control, recognizing what I don’t control and then trusting God […]
From Michael We had a really great weekend to close out the current message series as well as the season of Lent. Last week we topped 4100 in attendance but this weekend it was over 4200. Incredible. This was also our annual “First Serve” weekend where we challenged every member to become a minister. At […]
From Michael I am currently reading a book called “The Emotionally Healthy Church.” In the many ways that I have studied and even talked about Church, I had never seen this designation before. Big/small, old/new, vibrant/boring, traditional/contemporary, rich/ poor, well maintained/falling apart, Catholic/Protestant…are all designations that are usually made of Churches; but how about emotionally […]
