Warning: Chewing Gum Eats Brains
So lately I have been chewing a lot of gum. Why? Because I bought a package and it sit next to my computer and calls to me. I have discovered something about gum. If you chew enough of it, your head starts to hurt. Why? I have no idea. I think a large part of it has to do with jaw muscles and fatigue, but I have no real evidence to back up my claims. What I have noticed is that my ability for cognitive thought has decreased directly proportional to the amount of pain my head experiences. Therefore I have reached to conclusion that the makers of chewing gum are trying to eat my brain.
That being said, my church recently distributed a membership covenant to all its members. To continue to be a member of the church you have to sign and return this form. Now, I don't know if I have a problem with the principle of the idea, but how my church has decided to act it out. There are seven different items on the covenant. Of these seven, only one pertains to the beliefs of the church. The rest involve commitment level to the church and promising to follow the direction of the leadership of the church. Now if the covenant only contained what the church believed and would preach I'm not sure I would have a problem. However, all this feels like is another step of hoops to go through to get to be considered a member. Now according to the leadership most of this covenant stuff is to ensure people start getting involved in the church and we can begin to restore community. Almost all the problems we have at the church (I attend and am involved in ministry at a "mega church" with a normal attendance of about 3000) stem from the fact that we have no real sense of community. This stems from the fact that we really didn't start to work on small groups/ Bible studies until after we were already close to 2000. Small groups/ Bible studies are how you maintain a solid community of close members inside large church settings. My major point is, if you are involved in any church what so ever, encourage your leadership to begin small group/ Bible studies, run by members. This way when you grow you will still have communities that come together to worship instead of strangers who see each other once a week and sit next to each other while someone preaches and some other people sing on stage.
Anyway, if you have any comments, please leave them. I like to hear other peoples ideas on my thoughts.
That being said, my church recently distributed a membership covenant to all its members. To continue to be a member of the church you have to sign and return this form. Now, I don't know if I have a problem with the principle of the idea, but how my church has decided to act it out. There are seven different items on the covenant. Of these seven, only one pertains to the beliefs of the church. The rest involve commitment level to the church and promising to follow the direction of the leadership of the church. Now if the covenant only contained what the church believed and would preach I'm not sure I would have a problem. However, all this feels like is another step of hoops to go through to get to be considered a member. Now according to the leadership most of this covenant stuff is to ensure people start getting involved in the church and we can begin to restore community. Almost all the problems we have at the church (I attend and am involved in ministry at a "mega church" with a normal attendance of about 3000) stem from the fact that we have no real sense of community. This stems from the fact that we really didn't start to work on small groups/ Bible studies until after we were already close to 2000. Small groups/ Bible studies are how you maintain a solid community of close members inside large church settings. My major point is, if you are involved in any church what so ever, encourage your leadership to begin small group/ Bible studies, run by members. This way when you grow you will still have communities that come together to worship instead of strangers who see each other once a week and sit next to each other while someone preaches and some other people sing on stage.
Anyway, if you have any comments, please leave them. I like to hear other peoples ideas on my thoughts.
posted by jonathan | 12:58 PM
7 Comments:
Personally, I'm tired of leaders in the church making strange decisions without even taking it to the congregation. Yours is strange, however, our church is just pissing people off.
The Elders think they know what's right about a ministry in the church they're not even a part of nor do they know how it works. Yet they decided to replace the person who has dedicated their life for the last 12 years. Spent 100,000.$ of their own money to make it work and built it from the ground up after horrendous events took place.
But because my mother-in-law, is a woman and doesn't have a penis she needs to be replaced by a man who will do the Elders bidding and is only 23 years of age. That is crap. And not to mention that they hid all of this from the congregation when they normally vote a new pastor in. Also they humiliated, insulted, and hurt her as well as insulting the team, not to mention lied numerous times through their teeth.
And these crap job so-called Elders have hid a previous pastors affairs on his wife, covered up, ignored and denied the cheatings of the previous worship leader and ignored a pretentious, immature, resentful, lying and stealing man who is still in charge as he throws away the churches money. Yet they decide a woman, who has done nothing to be removed and everything to help bring the team to where it's at can't be the leader anymore because they want things done their way.
Instead of a contempary church that is growing and in a new building they want this 700+ church to be a small old-fashioned church with their "boy's club" completed with each man doing their will.
(steps off soapbox...)
Really the problem I see with most churches toady IS the size. If you have 100 members it's hard to hide problems like that and it's easier for the congregation to make their opinions known among the leadership (and when you have a smaller church it's harder for the leadership to ignore that opinion). I might be biased but when I lived in Durango the church going community felt so much more alive than any church around here (the leaders from each church met with the others each week and prayed over the body as a whole) and other little details like that.
Jerg, I can agree with that. I think that after a church becomes so big there should be parts that break off and start new churches to get more out there. The problem that I think with big churches besides hiding the problems the congregation chooses to ignore it. This way they can feel they aren't choosing sides and creating more problems but I think that creates them just the same. And granted the small churches will have their problems as well. I do like the smaller congregation size but sometimes they can be against updating to perform better. I love my grandparents church which is about around 50 but I know with the pastor he doesn't like the idea of upgrading from a projector to slides on a screen ran by a computer. He also doesn't like to discuss the churches money issues in front of his almost 20 year old son. That is something I think the son needs to know about for many reasons.
So all in all a church is a church with problems of all kinds no matter how big or small.
thank you. that means a lot to me. more than you probably know.
JaJa, check out the blog! :)
it's tough, that's all I know.
yeah, it's tough. and it has become worse. incredibly worse. it's so bad we're now laughing about it because it's so ridiculous.
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