Entries Tagged 'Events' ↓

Last Saturday, four of us from Centre Grove went to a leadership seminar called, How to Reach Unchurched People in Your Community, presented by Dr. Charles Arn, held at Krislund Camp. The presentation, as well as the content and research behind it, were very good!

Some notes I jotted down …

The church is in the business of relationships (with God, each other, and the community).

Keep the congregational focus outward!

Even though Arn is Presbyterian and the event was sponsored by the Northumberland Presbytery, there was a strong Wesleyan influence. Arn quoted Wesley as well as contemporary evangelism expert, Dr. George Hunter, including his seminal book, Church for the Unchurched. One of the highlights of our time at Asbury Theological Seminary was taking Hunter’s class, Church for the Unchurched.

Arn talked about the New Testament focus on one’s “household” (oikos), or social network, as we might call it today. When someone became a follower of Jesus in the first century, they influenced their entire social network for Christ.

The same is true today. The overwhelming reason why people first come to church is because of a friend or relative (75-90% while no other factor surpasses 5 or 6%). Research also shows that people who leave churches do so because they don’t feel needed/wanted (81%).

Interestingly, only 1-6% of people attend church because of the pastor. I’ve always known that that number is low, but what I didn’t know is that it’s even low at a place like the Crystal Cathedral, founded by Dr. Robert H. Schuller, where researchers discovered that about 7.5% of the people attend because of the (extremely high profile) pastor. Of course, pastors play an important role in shaping church culture which has an impact on how invitational people are.

Some other statistics that were especially interesting …

In the average church, 9% of first-time visitors become active members or regular attenders within a year. But in growing churches, 21% of first-time visitors become active attenders/participants — (only) 2 out of 10, instead of 1 out of 10.

About 1% of people attend a church event after receiving a well-written notice in the mail (yikes!). But 28% attend when invited by a friend! That’s an astronomical difference!

Arn suggested focusing on people who are receptive at any given time (people can fluctuate between receptivity and resistance). Based on the research above, often the people who are most receptive are friends, relatives, and neighbors of present members.

Arn presented an approach called Ministry-based Outreach, which he defined as …

an intentional commitment to build meaningful relationships between members and non-members based around shared interests.

Churches can form ministry-based outreach groups for people who share common concerns or common interests (see examples here).

In fact, on the hour-plus drive home, we developed an idea for our first ministry-based outreach ministry. The details will need to be worked out, but we anticipate putting our first group (made up of people from Centre Grove AND people who are not connected to the church) together sometime this summer.

Well, there was lots of other practical stuff, more than I can include here. But the event was well worth attending!

As I mentioned a few days ago, Leadership Network held a free online leadership event today called, Aha!, a 4-hour (plus) series of videos from around 40 different presenters talking about their aha! moments.

I had the event running on my computer (to the TV) the entire time, but I didn’t catch nearly all of it (other tasks and/or kids). But I think the quote that struck me most came from Pete Briscoe (Bent Tree Bible Fellowship), who shared his aha! moment …

I am no longer working for Jesus. I’m walking with him.

This was a great reminder that our call to serve and lead must always be grounded in a relationship with God. Nothing is more important than our relationship with God!

Dale Dawson talked about passion and stated …

And Jon Ferguson (Community Christian Church) offered six great questions for coaches/mentors to use with people they’re coaching/mentoring …

1. How are you?
2. What are you celebrating? Where are you winning?
3. What challenges are you experiencing?
4. What do you plan to do to solve these challenges?
5. How can I help you?
6. How can I pray for you?

I’m sure there were some other impacting statements as well, so I’ll try to catch some of the videos after they are posted in the near future. I’ll edit this post to add the link when it’s available.

Last fall, Leadership Network offered a free online leadership event called, The Nines (see my posts, The Nines Marathon and More on The Nines). Now, they are offering another online event called Aha!.

Aha!, which is expected to last about four hours, will focus on fresh ideas in the church coming from about 40 different presenters. The free event will take place Wednesday, March 3, 2010 beginning at noon Eastern.

According to the site, pre-registration is required. This time around, you can pay $20 for some extras, including full speaker notes (in advance).

It should be good.

At last week’s Bishop’s Retreat, Gilbert Rendle talked about the change that’s taking place in the world and in the church as well as the leadership that’s needed, as a result of the cultural change.

At the end of his presentation on Tuesday evening, Rendle challenged attendees to discover the “ten percent” (the amount of content most people can absorb from a seminar) that they needed to take home with them. After some reflection, here’s what I think I’m taking away from the retreat.

I thought the presentation on cultural change that’s going on both in the world and in the church was helpful, but I want to focus on the content from Rendle’s presentation on leadership, that is, how to lead change in the midst of a changing world.

Leadership vs. Management. Rendle talked about the difference between management and leadership. While both are necessary, most leaders were simply trained to be managers, to keep things running smoothly.

Management is primarily responsible for the present moment, for doing things right. Leadership is responsible for the future and change, for doing right things. While there’s been a growing amount of emphasis on the importance of leadership in recent years/decades, Rendle noted that …

We are asked for leadership at a time when we are rewarded for management. But you cannot do leadership without disrupting management.

So, while I certainly want things to run smoothly, I also realize that part of my job is to “stir the pot” (see my 2006 sermon for more on Stirring the Pot).

The Leadership Challenge. There is a disruptive component to leadership that makes leadership especially challenging. Rendle stated …

One of our tasks is to make people appropriately uncomfortable.

Of course, not everyone will go along for the journey, so Rendle offered a warning …

If you have a ‘no person left behind’ policy, you have already determined that you’re not going to do anything!

Leaders and churches must be willing to do the right things even when there’s resistance, because the alternative is simply to do nothing, or at least nothing worthwhile or life-changing.

Rendle also offered four leadership skills in his final session. But before I reflect on those, I need to review the video of the sessions, which are expected to be posted to the conference website this week.

We are at the halfway point at the 2010 Bishop’s Retreat of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of The United Methodist Church.

We arrived at the retreat, which is taking place at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster, PA. Last year, our first time to attend the annual retreat, we came a day early to get settled in and to relax (we also posted some learnings from the retreat).

This year, we chose not to come a day early because we were concerned about how well Sarah would sleep here. We figured two nights would be better than three, at this point (although next year, I think we’ll come early; it’s more relaxing). We did arrive in town a few hours early to shop at the outlets before checking into our room just in time for the opening meal (followed by the evening session).

Ethan was with us last year, too, and this year, it’s a first for Sarah. Ethan hasn’t always handled being dropped off at child care in these kinds of “strange” gatherings very well, but we were hoping that having Sarah (a familiar face) with him would make things easier this time. Such was not the case. Last night, as we arrived at the door to the child care room, we experienced his worst ever response (too bad I didn’t have the video camera ready ). I had to chase him (while he cried loudly) down the hallway. I caught up to him at one of the exits. Of course, he continued to cry until shortly after we left. He was fine then and had a good time. This morning, we experienced a much less eventful drop-off, leaving two more drop-offs to go (this evening and tomorrow morning).

Since this is a “retreat,” we get Tuesday afternoons off. For us, that means trying to get the kids to take a nap. We gave up with Ethan and Joleen took him to the pool (which caught up to him later; see photo below). Fortunately, Sarah, who did not get much sleep last night (she went to sleep very late and woke up very early), had a good (up to) hour-and-a-half nap.

Last year, Ethan’s favorite spot was the fountain (which Ethan calls “mountain”). That’s still true this year. This morning, on the way to dropping him off at child care, we stopped at the fountain for a quick look. When we got to the child care room, he immediately started telling the child care workers, and everyone else, about the fountain (and how the water goes “up the pipes,” something I had explained to him yesterday).

Well, I’ll say more about what we’re learning from Gil Rendle, the speaker at this retreat, a little later. For now, I’ll simply say, there’s a lot of good stuff on leading change to chew on. Both the communication and the content are very good.

Here are some images from today …

 

Last week, Bishop Robert Schnase (Bishop in Residence of the Missouri Area of The United Methodist Church) came to teach on the Five Practices in our conference.

Since we’re working our way through the Five Practices at Centre Grove, the event was partly review for me, but it was also good to hear Bishop Schnase teach on the practices live and in person.

Bishop Schnase divided the day into three sections: (1) discussion of the five practices, (2) congregational systems, and (3) personal systems.

Bishop Schnase began with a summary/overview of the practices, then discussed how systems within the church are conducive (or not) to fruitfulness. The day concluded with a discussion on individual responsibility, from leaders modeling the practices to the members living as authentic followers of Jesus in the world.

I won’t say much about the summary/overview since I’m blogging the five practices elsewhere, but here are a few statements (which may or may not be exact quotes) that especially challenged me:

Mission happens at the margin. Where does my life intersect with people at the margins?

Imagine if one-fourth of your congregation had a spiritual conversation once a month. We can’t make those conversations happen; we just have to be receptive. When we become attentive to God’s calling (what God wants us to do), doors open.

Doing these things doesn’t guarantee that growth will happen, but it won’t happen without them!

Good stuff. Bishop Schnase noted that the Five Practices are not a church growth strategy. Rather, it’s about living out our theology. It’s who we’re called to become.

Centre Grove began discussing the Five Practices in January 2009, and it’ll probably take us most of 2010 to get through all the practices. In 2010, I plan to devote an entire sermon series to the Five Practices. By then, a lot of the practices will actually already be in place or well under way, and the series will (hopefully) help to shape the spiritual/missional DNA of the congregation.

I participated in this morning’s See You at the Pole event at Clearfield High School. This is what I shared.

Engage: Go and Pray
“Go and pray to God for me and for the people …” (2 Kings 22.13a, The Message)

Israel and Judah had a history of waning back and forth in their commitment to God. Sometimes they followed wholeheartedly, sometimes they didn’t follow God at all.

During the period of the kings, the people’s commitment to God could be traced to the king’s commitment to God. If the king followed God wholeheartedly, the people followed God wholeheartedly. The books of 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles, chronicle the reign of the kings. Some did right in the sight of God, some did evil in the sight of God.

Along comes Josiah. Josiah is in the family succession to become king and becomes kings at the age of 8 years old. (If you have any little brothers or sisters at home, that kind of a scary thought, isn’t it? An 8 year old leading a nation.) But the Scriptures tell us that as Josiah becomes 16 years old, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his father, David, not turning aside to the right or to the left” (2 Kings 22.2).

Josiah was on fire for God. He had all the idols and places of worship to gods other than the Lord God, torn down and destroyed. He was rebuilding the temple, the place of worship of the Lord God. And as they were reconstructing the temple, the workers found a book, a long forgotten book, The Law of the Lord, The Bible.

The Scriptures say of Josiah, “When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes.” Tearing one’s clothes was a sign of grief, of mourning. Josiah was saddened that they had not been reading the Word of God and furthermore, they had not be obeying the Word of God.

It was at this time he sent word to the priest to “Go and pray for me and the people.”

Engage: Go and Pray.

Engage means to make a connection. It describes two pieces fitting perfectly together as in a gear or two puzzle pieces. An engaging personality, someone you like to be with, someone who upon first meeting them, you feel comfortable around. Engaging the audience (something I hope I’m doing right now.) You get and keep their attention. Engage in conversation. Those participating in the conversation are interested: interested in one another, interested in the topic of conversation.

This year, this school year, you are challenged to engage.

• To engage with God in prayer.
• To engage with God’s Word and grow in your relationship with him and your obedience to his Word. To passionately pursue God and his will.
• To engage others. To, like Josiah, not only tear down the idols in your life, but as you live as wholly following God, you will impact your world around you. Josiah wasn’t concerned just for his own life and his own family. He was concerned for all the people. He asked the priest to pray not just for him, but for all the people. He desired that everyone have a heart for God. Therefore, Josiah not only engaged with God in prayer and engaged with God’s Word. Josiah engaged with others.

Engage others with your unique personality, that is a reflection of Christ’s love for them. Engage others as a speaker engages an audience. That doesn’t mean you have to speak a word; let your life speak volumes. Engage others in conversation about God, about the difference God makes in your life. Engage God in prayer for the others your life can and will touch!

At around 4:00 p.m. today, we wrapped up annual conference with the ordination service. The ordination service is always one of the highlights of annual conference. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the service is at the end when the Bishop invites people from the congregation who sense that God may be calling them to (servant-leadership) ministry. I love watching people respond to the leading and prompting of God’s Spirit.

The ordination service was a particular highlight for us today as Joleen and I were both commissioned as Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church (I recently wrote about the process we’re in for the next two years.)

Twelve people were commissioned and five were ordained as Elders. If everything stays on track, we expect to be ordained in 2011. There could be a large ordination group next year (2010) as we have an overlap of Provisional Members in the former 3-year process with those in the current 2-year process. There may also be a few candidates from the Pennsylvania churches of the Wyoming Conference (which are uniting with the churches of the Central Pennsylvania Conference in 2010).

Well, as I suggested last night, Ethan was ready to come home today. He woke up early this morning — about 5:30 a.m. On top of that, he missed his afternoon nap, playing in child care during the ordination service. But he did sleep for nearly two of the three hours on the road home.

In the near future, after I’ve had a chance to process my experience at Annual Conference, I will try to blog some of my reflections. In the meantime, here’s a PDF at the conference website with the voting results of the 32 amendments. The final results (of members of all conferences) will be announced by the Council of Bishops at their fall meeting later this year.

Now, I need to get some rest before tomorrow’s worship service!

Home. That’s a word that Ethan has been saying over the course of the last 24 hours or so. Ethan is ready to go home.

Being in an unfamiliar place in a sea of mostly unfamiliar people is pretty daunting, especially for a soon-to-be two-year-old who is getting a lot of attention!

Today’s session of annual conference included a lot of “worshipful work,” including 32 amendments to the constitution of The United Methodist Church (along with 61 other U.S. annual conferences this summer; to pass, an amendment must receive two-thirds of the votes of all the voting of members across the connection). There was also a Bible study in the morning and a celebration of ministry service in the evening where pastors who are retiring were honored for their years of service.

Following the evening’s service (which I skipped out in the middle of to put Ethan to bed), Joleen and I attended the rehearsal for tomorrow’s ordination service where we will be commissioned as Provisional Elders (thanks, Nancy, for hanging out in our room while Ethan slept!).

We head into Saturday trusting that (1) commissioning will be meaningful, and (2) that Ethan will survive another day of annual conference!

We are at the annual conference of the Central Pennsylvania Conference this week taking place at Messiah College. We arrived yesterday to settle into our room and to attend a dinner with the Board of Ordained Ministry for those who are in the commissioning process along with their mentors.

Annual Conference began this morning with separate clergy and laity sessions. In the clergy session, Joleen and I were among those approved for commissioning as Provisional Elders in The United Methodist Church. We’ll probably say more about that at the end of the week!

As meaningful as that was, the real highlight of the day for us was serving as a “Gospel-bearing family” during the evening’s Memorial service where the three of us each carried Bibles to the altar during a song of preparation for the reading of the Scriptures.

We weren’t sure how Ethan would handle it — it was a long hard day spending part of the day in child care and later taking an abbreviated nap (unfortunately!) on the balcony as we took our place with the writing staff of the “Daily Link” (the daily newspaper of annual conference).

At the last minute, we decided to see if Ethan would walk, carrying his small Bible. We figured if that didn’t work, we’d pick him up and carry him. When we first got into the aisle and Ethan took my hand, he froze for a moment, then proceeded to walk forward. He also climbed the steps under lots of pressure as well over a thousand people watched! When we got to the back of the stage, I placed the large pulpit Bible on the altar, then lifted Ethan so he could place his Bible on top of the pulpit Bible; he knew just where to put it even without a practice run-through! (Thanks to Michelle Bodle for taking the photos.)

Today was a day of remembering and celebrating our calls to ministry. It was also a reminder that our family is the most important ministry we’ll ever have!