January 23, 2008
Re-Invention
Looking through the church pictorial directory, the monthly newsletter or the weekly bulletin, the job titles and descriptions for the staff are constantly changing. Currently our mid-size congregation has five staff positions. The recent bulletin gives us the individual’s name followed by latest job description. 1) Music & Worship Minister. 2) Director of discipleship for parents of newborns-kindergarten. 3) Pastor of discipleship through small groups, ministry teams and serves as a teaching pastor. 4) Lead pastor whose focus is teaching, discipleship for parents of elementary-high school age children, and discipleship in marriage. 5) Facilities Manager. So what ever happened to Worship Minister, Children’s Director, Associate Minister, Senior Minister and Custodian? I think someone’s read one too many self-help books on how to re-invent yourself.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----We all have our Spirit given gifts which become our areas of service in the body. With that individuality, I suppose, is the opportunity to call our posts whatever we think describes them most. It sounds to me like your leaders are just exercising their individuality. And I don’t think that is the problem.
-----The church is not defined by any one man’s type of service, nor is its activity directed by any one man‘s own ambitions. It is a group of people all bringing their gifts together and serving each other. That is a large part of serving the Lord - building up His church. And His people are His church. God gave the church leaders to foster this collection of services, not to diminish it. Men like the leaders at your church believe that God has chosen them to direct everyone in the church to become the same body part, the same one that the preacher is. Since he sees all service through the sleeve of family ministries, the whole church must see all service through the sleeve of family ministries. If you are not an arm, but a leg, maybe, you will still have to put yourself into a sleeve because the preacher is an arm, and everyone must do things his way. If the whole church were to be called, “Li’l Preacher Family Ministries,” or something to that effect, instead of XXX Church, this issue, and others worse than it, would return to a better alignment with the Word. For then, the gathering of people would properly work toward the single goal of strengthening families without trying to fool anyone into thinking it was a church rather than a mission. Nobody would expect it to be a church having a true diversity of goals extending from a diversity of gifts and a diversity of needs. If it were acknowledged to be the one man program that it is, if someone was not feeling served, or was feeling his gifts and talents were out of place there, he could easily go somewhere else without feeling like he was abandoning a church. He would just be leaving a program.
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