Ben Arment of Reston Community Church (Reston, VA) has made their current organization chart and job descriptions for staff and volunteers available for free download from his blog. RCC meets in a movie theater, but these resources are helpful references regardless of where your church meets.
I have added Church Relevance’s June ‘07 newsletter, 7 Things Running Taught Me About Ministry, to the site. Here is an excerpt:
The Apostle Paul begins Second Timothy 2 by telling Timothy that he should be like a soldier, an athlete, and a farmer. I have never been a soldier or a farmer, but I have been an athlete. I used to run hurdles in track and field, and I have always enjoyed Paul’s comparison of ministry to running a race.
So what can we learn from a runner? How can the principles of running a race help us create more effective ministries?
Here are 7 things that running taught me about ministry:
#1 :: Get a Good Coach
Find quality mentors. Finding the right coach was the best thing that ever happened to me in track and field. Look for people who can tell you the right things to do and how to do them well.
Reverse graffiti is the art of creating graffiti by removing dirt from a surface. Paul “Moose” Curtis, Ossario, and Scott Wade have helped make the medium popular. And Moose’s UK company, Symbollix, has made the art form profitable by using reverse graffiti to create cleanvertising (temporary advertising created by cleaning a surface).
Street Advertising Services, another UK advertising agency, uses high pressure steam and water machines with large stencils to create ads on walls, roads, pavements, and road signs.
Unfortunately, reverse graffiti is illegal in some places, and your church should carefully research the law before attempting to cleanvertise your community. However, it is legal to cleanvertise your car, and I am sure that there are a few sermon series where cleanvertising would be a relevant and memorable way to promote them.
Here is a video of Ossario at work:
[via Springwise & Trend Hunter]
The world has seen quite a few ministry scandals over the past year. Fortunately, Charisma magazine’s J. Lee Grady has 10 tips on how you can prevent scandal in your own life. Here is a summary.
Rick Warren of Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA) shares three church marketing essentials in a recent Christian Post article. Here is a summary:
In other words, the better you understand the people whom you are called to reach, the more effective you will be in reaching them.
TopVerses.com is a new online tool that lets you search the Bible by keyword and sorts the results by verse popularity. The goal is to help you get the best Bible verse search results.
To determine verse popularity, TopVerse’s creators analyzed 37 million Bible references from across the Internet and ranked 31,101 verses according to their Web popularity.
It is a great read for making you think. It is a reminder that how you perceive your ministry may not be the same as how those you minister to perceive it. It makes you consider why you do what you do and question if there is a better way to do your ministry. In the foreword, George Barna opens the book saying,
Few religious leaders or churches have any idea what it’s like for an outsider to try to break into the holy huddle. Most churched people have been so immersed in the church world that they have completely lost touch with what it is like to come through the church door and try to fit into a place that has very distinct habits, language, goals, events, titles, architecture, traditions, expectations, and measurements.
I was particularly intrigued by Matt Casper’s perspective (that of a musician and an atheist). Here are a few highlights from his insight:
On slick worship music -
[Jim: “On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you rate the music?”]
Two stars. That’s all I can do for you here.
For presentation and professionalism, they get a 4 or a 5, but the music is too contrived, too slick, too professional, really.
[Jim: “But that’s a good thing, no? That should attract people, right?”]
Maybe people who like American Idol. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I see the entertainment value, but when it comes to music, I like it pure. Too much polish and you lose the heartfelt power, you lose the soul of the music, and you’re not going to move anyone.
On fancy staging -
These guys are actually helping people, and the diversity of the attendees seems to be representative of the urban area where they are located.
I can relate to this part of the church, but I don’t understand why they need to do the big show. Why don’t they just help people and call it good? Why the fog machine, camera crane, multiple screens, PowerPoint, and the lights, lights, lights?
I think the light show and all that, for me anyway, does less to attract and connect me than to disconnect me.
On song lyrics -
[What bothered me is] the massive disconnect between the words on the PowerPoint projection and the stuff I saw in the church.
On good deeds -
To someone like me who doesn’t believe there is a literal God that we’re going to meet someday up in the sky, a God that can’t be proven otherwise… well, to me, proof of good deeds.. count more than anything. That’s evidence that you are following what anybody can read in the Bible.
Even though I don’t believe in God, I see evidence of the idea of God being a good thing…
On the modern church -
What does the way Christianity is practiced today have anything to do with the handful of words and deeds uttered by a man who walked the earth two thousand years ago?
These are just a few of the many thoughts Casper transparently shares throughout the book as he and Jim visit churches like Saddleback Church, Mosaic Church, Willow Creek Community Church, Mars Hill Church, Lakewood Church, and The Potter’s House. So what’s the point of the book? Jim Henderson concludes with this:
Unless we’re willing to remove the handles from the front doors of our churches and publicly say to outsiders, “We don’t care what you think,” the church must become more reflective and repentant about how outsiders perceive us.
Become self-aware.
There have been quite a few lists ranking churches over the past several years. They rank the largest churches. The multiplying churches. They rank which churches are innovative, influential, or fast-growing.
But no list is perfect.
Last spring in the pursuit of a better list, I merged many of the lists into one list and called it “The Top 22 Churches in America.” Since then, four more lists have been released and the “Top Churches” list needed updated.
I am pleased to announce that Church Relevance’s “Resources” section will now have a continually updated page featuring the “Top Churches to Watch in America.” At the moment, it merges 10 separate lists into one to determine which churches rank the highest over all of the lists.
The Current Top 10:
Again, I will be updating this list of the Top Churches to Watch in America as more lists are published.
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