Your Church's Reputation.

How do we become known as the church that is more interested in helping than being helped? The church that is more interested in loving than being loved? The church that is more interested in giving than getting? How do we become a church that gives itself away?
If we try to be all things to all people, in spite of Paul’s words, we are likely to become nothing to nobody stretched so thin that real accomplishments slip through our fingers. Most churches don’t have the manpower to staff effectively every ministry that can be thought of by human kind. Our communities each have hurting people with needs, but how do we choose which needs are most important? My suggestion is that boards, committees, and impact studies are not the answer. The key to being effective in an outreach area of ministry is to let people in the church who have a heart to fill certain need find others who are like minded. Once there is a core group of people who want to start a ministry, then it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of the pastoral staff to try to coerce people into volunteering for something that a committee decided would be a good idea. All the pastor/pastors need to do at that point is be supportive and if needed get the process going by which some funding from the church’s budget can be used to help finance the ministry. As lay leaders in the church are trained to take charge of areas of ministry it promotes spiritual growth in the leader, the group and reaches out to the community in a way that you as the pastor might never be able to. Letting people know that it isn’t about how many people will join your church because of this new ministry but how many lives will be affected for Jesus Christ is a great step in the right direction. Creating an environment in which people feel free to try something new, perhaps having great success and perhaps failing, is this layman’s view of a great pastor and pastoral staff.