Know-It-Alls

I blogged last week about all the changes. Hopefully it gets communicated well through the many avenues that the church has to convey the information. There is a newsletter available every Sunday. An email version gets sent out every week also. There is the bulletin, the website, the marquis and I blog. Plus I try to send out emails every week to fill in gaps that may have been missed throughout the previous week. Communication is important. So hopefully the word gets out.

Amidst all the changes over the last few months, however, is a large increase in activity. One of the pitfalls of these changes include a mind-set that comes from being use to a small church that says, 'I need to know everything about everything'. Don't get me wrong. It is good to be informed. I would suggest, however, that in it's extreme, this attitude can prohibit the church from expanding and improving ministry. One person can be only involved to a certain degree. Eventually, if a church is doing what it is suppose to be doing, then the church's activity will exceed any person's capability of being involved with everything. This includes the pastor. Even if I try to micromanage every area of ministry, I would be tragically holding back Emmanuel's willingness to live out it's potential.

The danger in this is that stagnation can occur because if a small group of people take on this mindset then another attitude can develop that says, 'well...if I don't know what's going on then it doesn't need to happen'. Put simply, this is a power play that keeps small churches small. When any individual or any group of people becomes more important than the churches purpose of 'making disciples of Jesus', then the purpose takes a back seat to personal agenda. Then you have a church not driven by the Spirit of God, but driven by individuals who want to feel important.

The good news is that I don't see much of this at Emmanuel. One of the reasons we've gone 1,000 mph is that so many people are willing to expand the church's ministry in so many directions. This is exciting, but also scary. As your pastor, I'm working very hard to manage the fast expansion of activity so that we stay focused on the purpose of the church. We must keep our focus! And if we can, we will be structured for some very serious growth....numeric growth AND spiritual growth. The Kingdom of God will expand.

Small groups is already showing wonderful signs of growth in relationships. I'm so pumped about this. In my next blog, I'll share another possible pitfall associated with Small Groups. In the weeks ahead I'll also be sharing about the pluses and minuses of trying a 2nd worship service.