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BestPractices
 August 26, 2009
Loren in capA note from my WWC classmate, Phil Muthersbaugh:

"Just wanted to say I like your new "look" on the Best Practices enewsletter! The cap and the sunglasses have totally recast your image in a postmodern culture. Kudos, dude!"

Thanks, Phil. But I'm really no cooler than I used to be. Just have postmodern sunglasses.

Last issue I told you about Mic Thurber's popular church database software, and even offered you a discount. It turns out that I didn't enter the link correctly! Apologies, Mic. Here's the page where you can contact Mic for a discount on Church Membership Directory.

Blessings
Loren Seibold, Editor, Best Practices for Adventist Ministry
IN THIS ISSUE
Reading: The end of Adventist ministry as we know it?
Pastor: Matt Gamble gets relevant
Resource: Website counter's Dale Ratzlaff's anti-Sabbath theology
Encouragement: Pastor, You're a Coach!
Quotes: "Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions."
News & ideas: Adventist Urban Congress, in August
Events: Music & Worship Conference
Reading For Pastors

On congregations and attitudes:
  • Does your church have a glassed-in "cry room"? Congregations are divided on their usefulness. Should children be unseen and unheard so the rest of us can concentrate? Or is it better to live with a little noise? Quote: "If you have a church and do not hear any crying babies, it's a dying church."
  • In the US, Christians' views of God continue to trend toward the universalist. Quote: "According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life" - including 37 percent of white evangelicals,"
The NAD church is changing rapidly, in giving, demographics and direction. Might we be seeing the end of Adventist ministry as we've known it for all these years?

An odd trend in religious fiction: Amish romance novels! Quote: "For the women readers who have made Amish romance the fastest-growing genre in Christian fiction, these books aren't exactly steamy aphrodisiacs. Hand-holding is a heart-stopping event.... Plots may stir an irresistable urge to bake rhubarb pie."

System theory has come to define almost every discipline. Why not theology? Here's an interesting presentation about what Andrew Sears calls "systemic theology."  Draw your own conclusions. (Thanks, Lynette Murdoch!)
Practicing Pastor

Matt GambleEffective Preaching to Unchurched People
by Matt Gamble

In Surprising Insights from the Unchurched, Thom Rainer makes the startling claim that the number one reason why an unchurched person chooses to attend a church is because of the pastor and his or her preaching. After interviewing 330 previously unchurched people, the characteristics of a pastor/preacher that were most attractive to an unchurched person who visited a church for the first time were that the preaching teaches, the preaching was applicable, the pastor was authentic, and the pastor had conviction.

Rainer's findings became the starting point for my own study. Because preaching is my passion I've tried to discover common elements among preachers who are attracting larger numbers of unchurched young adults. 

I found that to effectively reach unchurched people, a preacher must be:
  1. Aware - Specifically, the preacher is knowledgeable of the Bible passages they are preaching from as well as aware of the culture they are addressing (Acts 17:22-23).
  2. Amusing - This is not to suggest that the preacher be a jokester, but rather that he or she is engaging.  Ellen White says that we should "make (religious services) intensely interesting" (Matthew 13:34).
  3. Ardent - This isn't charisma per se, or volume and activity, but internal passion. Low-key Morris Venden has internal passion just as much as the enthusiastic E.E. Cleveland (Acts 4:33).
  4. Articulate - When people hear you speak, do they know what you are trying to say and what they're supposed to leave with? (Colossians 4:3,4) I recommend Andy Stanley's book, Communicating for Change.
  5. Authentic - Simply put, be real. Don't be someone you're not and don't be afraid of being honest about your struggles and victories (I Timothy 1:15,16).
  6. Attuned - You must be responsive to all involved in the preaching event. Specifically, this means being attuned to your audience, as well as to the Holy Spirit who may give you something to say when you least expect it (Acts 2:4,6).
Remember: "It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (I Corinthians 1:21).

Matthew Gamble, D.Min., is currently serving as an evangelist/revivalist and travels globally to share the gospel in creative ways. You can find him blogging at www.matthewgamble.com. He also serves as a consultant for the Center for Creative Ministry. Matt has made his D.Min. dissertation, about preaching to young adults, available here.
Featured Media
As churches gear up for the final thrust of the Year of Evangelism we've chosen three Vervent online presentations. To help prepare your congregation for evangelism you may wish to use Derik Morris's Radical Prayer. You can also download the manuscripts and slide templates. Listen to Carlton Byrd as he takes old school evangelism and adapts it to the 21st century. Finally listen to NAD president Don Schneider as he casts a vision for telling the story of Jesus. 
Resource Review
Website
New resource aimed at Ratlaff's Life Assurance Ministries

Weber websiteA group in Lincoln, Nebraska has just set up a new website called sdaforme.com, specifically to resource pastors to counter the influence of Life Assurance Ministries, an anti-sabbatarian ministry headed by ex-SDA pastor Dale Ratzlaff. The website is written by Martin Weber in consultation with Mid-America Union president, Roscoe Howard, and NAD president Don Schneider.
 
Martin Weber writes, "In the past five days we have had nearly 1,500 unique visits from around the world - mostly pastors. Here's what a Florida pastor wrote us: 'After a thorough reading of the question and answer portion I am sold on the timeliness for a website like this. It is about time we present a clear response to the bias and unfair accusations that circulate in other websites and literature. As a Seventh-day Adventist in pastoral ministry for over 15 years, I look forward to recommending to my congregations and friends that they visit your site.'

"Local Adventist church websites around the world are beginning to link to www.sdaforme.com. Anyone wishing to help spread the word can go to the website and click on 'Tell a Friend.' Please note the various banners and widgets that can be used for your church or personal social networking website, such as Facebook.
 
"A special feature of the website is a five-part dialogue between Desmond Ford and myself on the 1844 judgment."
Clergy Encouragement
dave vandenbergcoachPastor, You're a Coach!

by David Vandenburgh

Good pastors are coaches.

A coach is a person who helps you get where you want to go (think of "coach" as in "stagecoach" - a means of transport). A coach is not necessarily an expert in the thing you want to do, but rather an expert in helping you figure out where you want to go (from a Christian perspective, where God wants you to go) and then helping you figure out how to get there (from a Christian perspective, utilizing God-provided resources for accomplishing God's will).

That's really what a pastor does, at least according to the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4: Pastors are people who help other people become equipped (Greek: katartizo) to do what God wants them to do - they "equip the saints to do the work of ministry", to use Paul's language. Pastors don't do the work of ministry, they do their work of ministry which is to equip others to do their God-given work of ministry. In this sense, pastors are coaches. Success, for a pastor, comes when his/her church members are engaged in ministry according to their spiritual gifts and equipped to do it well.

David directs the coaching program of the Christian Leadership Center at Andrews University, and has a website devoted to Christian Leadership Coaching.
To the Point
Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you've become a comfortable, trusted element in another person's life.
- Dr. Joyce Brothers

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
- James Thurber

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.
- Jascha Heifetz

We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
- Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
- Cullen Hightower

The point I am making is quite offensive to us today. It is that God hides himself from us, that he cannot be had on our terms, and that he cannot be accessed from "below" through natural revelation. In the malls, and in much of life, we encounter nothing like this.  We expect access. We expect to be able to get what we want, when we want it, and on our terms. Here this is not the case. Here we have to be admitted to God's presence, on his terms, in his way ... or not at all.  We cannot simply walk into his presence. Here nature does not itself yield grace.  God's grace comes from the outside, not the inside, from above and not from within. It is not natural to fallen human life. We enter the presence of God as those who have been estranged, not as those who have been in continuity with the sacred simply because we are human. We are brought into a saving relationship through Christ; we do not put this together from within ourselves.
- David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant
News, Ideas & Reminders

  • Two big events coming up:
    • Adventist Urban Congress will be August 30-September 2, 2009, at the Dallas First Seventh-day Adventist Church. Register at PlusLine.
    • 5th Annual Music and Worship Conference, coming up September 17-19, 2009, at the Atlanta Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church. Info and registration here.
Got a tool, resource, site, article, idea or seminar that you like a lot? Share it with us at BestPractices@ameritech.net.
Upcoming NAD Events

Do you have an event you'd like to invite pastors to? Send details to BestPractices@Ameritech.net.
Best Practices is a Vervent publication of NAD CHURCH RESOURCE CENTER. Editor: Loren Seibold, Senior Pastor, Worthington Ohio Seventh-day Adventist Church. E-mail: Best Practices. You are free to republish pieces from Best Practices in your own newsletter or blog, with attribution to the Best Practices newsletter and the author of the piece.