Dennis Alexander, our Urban and Ethnic Ministries Staff for the Minnesota Annual Conference, recently interviewed Bob Farr of the Missouri Annual Conference on their discoveries concerning effective pastoral leadership in small churches. Here are a few notes which may be instructive to our pastors and lay church leadership. As a matter of personal observation on our district, I think that the most effective pastors we have in such small church settings plainly demonstrate each of these characteristics, and to the degree that their ministries could be enhanced, it's also mostly through these characteristics.
What are the skill sets necessary for a pastor to lead a small congregation to become vital, healthy, and growing?
1. The ability to preach well, such that sermons connect with the people.
2. The crafting and execution of meaningful worship: inspiring, passionate, hopeful, participatory, joyful -- “an awesome experience of God.”
3. Quality pastoral care of the people within the congregation. Pastors aren’t going to be allowed to do anything new if they haven’t built trust among the resident congregation. Key first question: “Who are the five key people I need to visit regularly?”
4. The ability to relate to the people in your mission field. Do you enjoy your community?
Are you known by name by community leaders? Do you hang out at the café, at businesses?
Are you “one of the locals”? Name your mission field and work it!
Have holy conversations where you make yourself known and make contacts.
Don’t “hold down the fort” – Instead, spend 10 hours a week or more working your field (20% of your time).
Become the community pastor – “Call me, if I can help in any way.”
5. Bring in the next five new people into the faith community. (There are many doors!)
The first one will be the challenge. After the first, others will follow.
Demonstrate what you expect your congregation to do, but you must be the first to invite and bring.
What Pastoral leadership styles are needed in a small congregation?
Answer: Preacher, Team Builder, Shepherd, Evangelist (Mission Field), Visionary, Administration (Manager) – not so much the Chaplain or the CEO. These styles are for other ministries.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
"Looking in the Direction of Easter"
Text(s): 1 Corinthians 13:10-12 and Luke 23:42-43
Every year at this time we start watching for the little signs that reflect the coming of spring: robins, jonquils, forsythia, snowbirds returning from Arizona and Florida. All of these signs converge and accumulate until we say, at last, it is now officially spring! The winter is gone! The call of the turtle dove is heard in the land!
So, spring comes. But I wonder where we look, how we watch, what early signs we should seek, when we want to know if it is Resurrection yet?
Paradise is hard to see and hard to spot in this world, I think. As Paul says, we now know only in part; we see, but dimly, so very dimly, how things should be, how things will be, even how things already are. We are all pretty much like the crucified thief, in a spiritual dead of winter, before he dared to call out to Jesus - still cold, still suffering in the dark, still barely aware that things could yet turn out differently. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis a little from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if there is only Good Friday and never Easter, then sin and death win. We lose. Spring never comes. Paradise never blossoms among us. Hope never gains its full victory. Fair love never wins faint heart. Mistakes never do get set right; sin never does get forgiven; failure never is forgotten; grudges never are superseded by hopeful trust; and our hope is truly futile. "We of all people are most to be pitied..." if there is only Good Friday.
This is why we all need to seek Easter and resurrection, even in little glimpses, for Easter is power. Resurrection is not merely a fantasy for the soul-weary or the disturbed, any more than spring is for the winter-fatigued heart. It is not mind-candy, or some magic cure for triskaidekaphobia or other superstitious fears. Even in the tiny buds and pre-dawn chirps we see of it in this world, it is the power of God to transform all things, to restore all losses, to comfort all hearts, to give wings to the weary. When we cry out for help from our many winters and personal Good Fridays, only God can answer us from the direction of Easter Sunday with such words as these: “You will be with me in Paradise.” Spring will come to the heart and soul! Then you shall know face to face!
Every year at this time we start watching for the little signs that reflect the coming of spring: robins, jonquils, forsythia, snowbirds returning from Arizona and Florida. All of these signs converge and accumulate until we say, at last, it is now officially spring! The winter is gone! The call of the turtle dove is heard in the land!
So, spring comes. But I wonder where we look, how we watch, what early signs we should seek, when we want to know if it is Resurrection yet?
Paradise is hard to see and hard to spot in this world, I think. As Paul says, we now know only in part; we see, but dimly, so very dimly, how things should be, how things will be, even how things already are. We are all pretty much like the crucified thief, in a spiritual dead of winter, before he dared to call out to Jesus - still cold, still suffering in the dark, still barely aware that things could yet turn out differently. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis a little from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if there is only Good Friday and never Easter, then sin and death win. We lose. Spring never comes. Paradise never blossoms among us. Hope never gains its full victory. Fair love never wins faint heart. Mistakes never do get set right; sin never does get forgiven; failure never is forgotten; grudges never are superseded by hopeful trust; and our hope is truly futile. "We of all people are most to be pitied..." if there is only Good Friday.
This is why we all need to seek Easter and resurrection, even in little glimpses, for Easter is power. Resurrection is not merely a fantasy for the soul-weary or the disturbed, any more than spring is for the winter-fatigued heart. It is not mind-candy, or some magic cure for triskaidekaphobia or other superstitious fears. Even in the tiny buds and pre-dawn chirps we see of it in this world, it is the power of God to transform all things, to restore all losses, to comfort all hearts, to give wings to the weary. When we cry out for help from our many winters and personal Good Fridays, only God can answer us from the direction of Easter Sunday with such words as these: “You will be with me in Paradise.” Spring will come to the heart and soul! Then you shall know face to face!
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