I've read a lot of leadership stuff over the years, both church and business leadership stuff: Harvard Business Review, John Maxwell, Rick Warren - you name it, I've read it. The truth is that I have read so much stuff that I have forgotten more than I have remembered. There is one thing that has stuck with me over the past 15 years of ministry - be intentional in everything that you do; what you are intentional about will happen, what you hope will happen will not.
My thoughts about the church have been revolving around this idea. At BRCC we spend time talking about the vision of reaching and growing people and "buying into the vision of the church." We even have the vision statement of the church right on the wall of our stairwell leading up to the sanctuary. The vision of the church is important because it determines the direction of the church. It eliminates thing that you shouldn't do while helping you decide what you should do. Just because a person or organization has a vision, that doesn't mean it automatically happens; one must set GOALS that help that vision to come to fruition
The reality is that we have not done a great job at BrookRidge in the past few years at setting goals within our vision. We have allowed our church community to kind of waver about in our events and our decisions. There have been a lot of great things that we have done in the past few years. We have really focused on fellowship and building relationship in our community. We have seen our small group ministry grow as a result of this great fellowship. We have had some great outreach events, like our Christmas and Easter outreach. When we made the decision to go to one service the purpose was to create more and better fellowship and build momentum for great worship each Sunday. I think we are well on our way (in 10 months) to accomplishing this.
Here is what we are not doing well - hard core reaching out to the community in a strategic way. I have felt that our love for those in the community and those who have yet to feel the love of Jesus waver. I'm afraid we might have replaced our desire to reach others with our desire to build internal community; to build community is great, but it needs to be done in partnership with evangelism - sharing Jesus in our own lives and through church community events. As pastor I want us to have a equal emphasis on evangelism as we do on building community; right now I think we are a little off.
My thoughts about the church have been revolving around this idea. At BRCC we spend time talking about the vision of reaching and growing people and "buying into the vision of the church." We even have the vision statement of the church right on the wall of our stairwell leading up to the sanctuary. The vision of the church is important because it determines the direction of the church. It eliminates thing that you shouldn't do while helping you decide what you should do. Just because a person or organization has a vision, that doesn't mean it automatically happens; one must set GOALS that help that vision to come to fruition
The reality is that we have not done a great job at BrookRidge in the past few years at setting goals within our vision. We have allowed our church community to kind of waver about in our events and our decisions. There have been a lot of great things that we have done in the past few years. We have really focused on fellowship and building relationship in our community. We have seen our small group ministry grow as a result of this great fellowship. We have had some great outreach events, like our Christmas and Easter outreach. When we made the decision to go to one service the purpose was to create more and better fellowship and build momentum for great worship each Sunday. I think we are well on our way (in 10 months) to accomplishing this.
Here is what we are not doing well - hard core reaching out to the community in a strategic way. I have felt that our love for those in the community and those who have yet to feel the love of Jesus waver. I'm afraid we might have replaced our desire to reach others with our desire to build internal community; to build community is great, but it needs to be done in partnership with evangelism - sharing Jesus in our own lives and through church community events. As pastor I want us to have a equal emphasis on evangelism as we do on building community; right now I think we are a little off.
So what do we do? What do they say - the first step is admitting there is a problem! We need to brainstorm together how to reach people who are in YOUR life as well as people in Haverhill, North Andover, Andover, Groveland, Georgetown, Plaistow, Hampstead, Atkinson, and all the other towns that are represented at BRCC.
We have to simply say "our heart is Jesus' heart - lost people were close to Jesus' heart, they should be close to our heart as well.
In some future posts I'm going to be sharing some of my own ideas as pastor and talking about some of the directions the church will take over the 9-12 months.
What ideas do you have
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