Our Staff Needs to Change for Our Church to Grow

A couple days ago in my post,"Easter: A Vision of what our church could be" I talked about how our Easter experience could be our regular Sunday experience if we as a church body would commit to doing the things we did in the lead-up to Easter regularly.

So I challenged our staff and asked them what WE needed to do for that to happen. We discussed it and came up with a list of things we need to keep doing, start doing and/or get better at if we want our church to be healthy (which is the source of growth). So if my post title freaked you out, relax. Nobody is getting fired! We are simply committed to change  in the following areas (in no particular order) so that we can be most effectively used by God at Calvary Fellowship:

1. Change our thinking -Once you do something repeatedly over time it is easy to get in a rut. We need to challenge our current processes and our thinking that got us where we are, but might limit us from getting where we need to be.
2. Develop a deeper culture of serving -We already have many great men and women serving at Calvary without whom we could not function. Just imagine if  everyone (or ALMOST everyone) was on board!
3. Challenge commitment -It is easy for apathy to creep into a church, and it is DEADLY! Paul and other NT church leaders regularly challenged people in the churches to commitment to Christ and other members of the church. We must do the same as church leaders.
4. Cast vision consistently -People must know where we're going, what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, and who we're doing it for. Otherwise, everybody loses focus and we all experience mission drift (Consistence is the key).
5. Leadership development -The staff cannot do all of the leading alone; we must train others and equip them to lead. We need to develop men and women to take on keys roles and responsibilities in the church or we're dead in the water!
6. Personal-development -We all need to get better at our core competencies/responsibilities by reading the right books, networking with the right people and pushing ourselves to become more effective.
7. Delegation -If we don't release some of our responsibilities to the people God is raising up we will be ineffective at the things we are called to do and frustrate those who should be doing we need to release to them.
8. Intentional outreach -We don't have a church building so we need to keep our name out in the community through service, personal invitation, press and promotion so that when God touches someone's heart in our community to pursue Him, they know where to go.
9. Improving assimilation -We have to continue making it easier for new people at church to take next steps, grow in their faith, and get connected to our church body.

There are always more things that can be done, but these are the things we know that our staff needs to work on, change or improve if we want to see our church healthy and ready to handle any growth that God may choose to bless us with.

Comments

[Mandy]

Those are all great things, Bill! I was reminded in the Biblical Counseling Class this past week that nothing can substitute for personal focus on spiritual growth and heart change/renewal - that as we grow in relationship with God, abiding in Him, we bear much fruit. I hope you will all take care of yourselves spiritually first! We sheep may try to demand that you give up that time for us, but just say "no!"

[Bill LaMorey]

Thanks for the reminder, Mandy. Yeah, for any of the technical/practical improvements (which is the focus of this post) to be effective there has to be the primacy of our spiritual growth. [I tend to write this blog more from a practices/technical standpoint so it might come off as if I don't consider or value the spiritual-formation side. That isn't the case; its just usually not the focus of the writing here.]

Re: sheep demanding time...It is essential for all leaders of the church to remember that while we lead sheep, we also ARE fellow sheep, and still need to be led and fed by the Great Shepherd too!