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January 2, 2008

 

 

 



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In this Edition:
Video: Gift Oriented Ministry
To the Point
Editor: "By No Ordinary Efforts"
Resources & Ideas
Cutting Edge Book: Intuitive Leadership
Back Talk: Readers Resond
BP Video
Gift-oriented ministry: Wayne Krause on how to get new members engaged in service.
Gift-oriented ministry
To the Point:


"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."
 - Jef Raskin

    And all must love the human form,
    In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
    Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
    There God is dwelling too.
 - William Blake

"If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around."
  - Christina Stead

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
  - Eric Hoffer

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"
  - Henry Ward Beecher

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
  - Ronald Reagan

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation; it is not any unhappier than its predecessors."
 - Samuel Beckett

"New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!"
 - Arthur C. Clarke

Got a favorite quote? Send it to BestPractices@ameritech.net. 
Loren's picture 4
Thinking Aloud:
"By No Ordinary Efforts"
by Loren Seibold, Best Practices editor

I'm always surprised when a congregation crucifies a well-meaning pastor who, in an effort to slow down the hemorrhage of the church's young, or to open the doors to those estranged from religion, tries something new.

Especially when our church, here in North America, is moribund. (You may argue with me about why, but that a majority of NAD congregations are stagnant by nearly every measure is hard to dispute.)

I supposed we oughtn't be surprised; churches are, by their nature, inertial organizations. Religion is one thing that people believe will not, nor need ever, change. Isn't the gospel everlasting, after all?

Yeah, but a lot of the stuff we do with it isn't. Society changes around the church, leaving it at its best quaint and antique, at worst irrelevant.

I recently ran across a collection of EGW quotes about change. (I don't know who compiled it, but thanks to the Greater New York Youth Department website for archiving it.) A sample:
  • "Some of the methods used in this work will be different from the methods used in the work in the past; but let no one, because of this, block the way by criticism." R&H, Sept. 30, 1902.
  • "God selects his messengers, and gives them his message; and he says, 'Forbid them not.' New methods must be introduced. God's people must awake to the necessities of the time in which they are living. God has men whom he will call into his service,--men who will not carry forward the work in the lifeless way in which it has been carried forward in the past...." R&H, September 30, 1902
  • "In the cities of today, where there is so much to attract and please, the people can be interested by no ordinary efforts. Ministers of God's appointment will find it necessary to put forth extraordinary efforts in order to arrest the attention of the multitudes." Evangelism, p.122
  • "Let every worker in the Master's vineyard, study, plan, devise methods, to reach the people where they are. We must do something out of the common course of things." Evangelism, p.122
The challenge, of course, is how to make changes without leaving behind those saints who, in spite of their limited horizon and terror of even temporary discomfort, we love and honor. (It isn't necessarily their fault: some pastors are foolish in how they implement change. And some think a bit of tinkering with organization or worship is a substitute for harder tasks, the ones that reach into the heart.)

But in any case: does it sound like Ellen White, were she here today, would tell us to keep doing what we've always done, even if it doesn't work?

I've posted the entire collection of quotations in a PDF file here. Thoughts on change? Write  BestPractices@ameritech.net.
Resources, Reflections, Links and Ideas
by Best Practices Editor, Loren Seibold

Got a tool, resource, idea or seminar that you like a lot? Share it with us at BestPractices@ameritech.net.
Cutting Edge Book

  • Point: Tim Keel tells the story of his leadership journey and that of his congregation, and in so doing challenges church leaders to "listen to their lives" and learn to create congregational environments in which God can call forth a missional imagination from His people.
  • Key Concept: Rather than aping the practices and techniques of successful churches around the world, Tim invites pastors to be rooted in a place, discerning the leading of God's Spirit for the people God has brought together in their place.
  • Pros: The book is a serious engagement with culture, philosophy, theology, ecclesiology and pastoral ministry without being too heady and unreadable. You will nod your head in places and scrunch up your eyebrows in other places.
  • Cons: Tim is not going to tell you what specific things they have done at his church, Jacob's Well. You aren't going to walk away from this book with "new tools for your tool belt." Some will see this as a con. It's actually intentional.
  • Why you should read it: Too many pastors are looking for a "silver bullet" - a technique or two that will fix what they perceive to be wrong with the church. This book opens up new ways of being in relationship to God, our congregations and the communities in which we live. Tim challenges pastors to let go their pursuit of answers and to learn to be comfortable with the ambiguities of ministry in a postmodern world. This will be a real stretch for a lot of pastors. But it's worth it!
-Review by Ryan Bell, Hollywood, CA
 
Back Talk:
Readers respond to Best Practices Articles

BP Video: "The Daughters of Abraham Book Club"

Thank you for the video about the Daughters of Abraham Book Club.  I wish all our church Women's Ministries Departments would get involved in this type of activity. I have forwarded this issue of BP to the union women's ministries directors with that suggestion. Of course, it will take special Adventists to form intentional friendships where they don't try to convert the other party but simply to understand them.  I have trouble getting people to understand our Women's Ministries' reclaiming ministry, Heart Call, because it asks our members to befriend and try to love their non-attending members back to church; they are to keep up the friendship whether the former member ever returns to church or not. For some this is very difficult; we Adventists want to put hooks into everything we do.
Carla Baker


Editorial:"Fading Adventist Orthopraxies"

Thank you for suggesting that Jesus actually was serious about being the Prince of Peace, that he was the founder of a kingdom based on service, not conquest. Sure, there are complicated questions about how to live in this sin-scared world, but our Master preferred his own death to killing. That should have some weight among us.
John McLarty

Why hasn't the church come out with a strong stand on separationism and its historical/constitutional roots (such as a documentary film)? ... I'm probably going to film at this election year's fundamentalist rally on the mall again. It's amazing how much apocryphal, erroneous, revisionist rhetoric proliferates at such an event. I wish the church would do this!
Victor Marshall

I am concerned that many Adventists have become obsessed with stopping Bible prophecy. The sign of the end is the gospel going to the whole world (Matthew 24:14), not the Sunday law. Such a law will come as prophetically predicted, but it won't be just the conservatives (religious people) that will bring it on; it would require both conservatives and liberals. In this election we need to vote on current issues that we can have some effect on like the abortion and parents' right to raise their kids without too much government oversight (Deuteronomy 6: 6,7). ... We know where candidates stand on these things. Let's vote on what we can know and understand about current issues rather than trying to guess what a candidate might possibly do in the future.  Persecution will come at the end of time. We cannot stop it. But thanks be to God who has promised to see us through.
Steve Severance
Events
Do you have an SDA-sponsored event that you'd like to invite NAD pastors to? Tell us about it at BestPractices@ameritech.net.
NAD Church RESOURCE Center
Best Practices is an e-publication of Vervent
NAD CHURCH RESOURCE CENTER
Editor: Loren Seibold
Senior Pastor, Worthington Ohio Seventh-day Adventist Church