Your Journey Blog

Children's Disciples Book by Gary Rohrmayer

Life's Greatest Adventure Guiding Your Child on Their Spiritual Journey Eight projects to help children begin their journey with Jesus on the right track. Reviewing Christ's message, assurance of salvation, baptism, communion how to begin a devotional life, dealing with temptation and sharing God's message. An great resource to use for follow up materials for your VBS, Backyard Club, Camp ministry or Neighborhood Bible Clubs An excellent tool for pastors and parents to use with children who want to get baptized.   Check out the Summer Sale Prices

Spiritual Warfare: Closed Doors

This week we continue to answer the following question: How does God’s enemy come after His people and His leaders for the sole purpose of distracting, disrupting and derailing them from being involved in God's great mission?

As we survey Pauline literature we will discover fourteen tactical strategies that the enemy will use to come after God's people along with specific antidotes in addressing that problem.  See the introduction to this series to receive an overview of this subject.

9. Closed Doors

"Hearing God’s voice is indispensable to moving through or around closed doors." - Gary Rohrmayer

Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:18 - For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan stopped us.

Problem: “Satan can block a believer’s guidance. So closed doors are not always clear guidance.” J. Robert Clinton

Antidote: “Get certainty guidance. Let all of the major guidance elements give weight to your guidance: God’s Voice in the Word; God’s Voice in the Heart; God’s Voice in Circumstances; God’s Voice in the Church.” J Robert Clinton

Reflective Questions:

• Is every closed door an attack from the evil one? See Acts 16:6-8
• How do you let the Word of God guide you in your decisions as leaders in the church?
• How do you slow down enough to hear God’s voice in leading the church? See Acts 13:1-2
• How do you interpret God’s leading in the circumstances you face whether good or bad?
• How do you as leaders hear God’s voice through the church?

Prayer:  Father in Heaven, give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church and through the church.  May our lives be so saturated with your Word that all our decisions will be based on your revealed purposes and promises.  Teach us how to seek you in our leadership meetings through worship and fasting.  Keep our hearts from being distracted from your mission because of our circumstances.  Grant us courageous faith to stand against the attacks of the enemy of God.  We pray this in the great and mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Next Week: False Signs and Wonders

View the entire series of posts on Spiritual Warfare

Great Video of Born Again by Third Day

Church Health by the Numbers

One book I have referred to over the last 20 years is a book entitled Church Growth Ratio Book by Win Arn. In this little book we discover that numbers and their corresponding ratios are very significant beyond the old "nickles and noses" measurements we hear so much about.

Arn writes, "Ratios are useful guides for congregations regardless of church size, for ratios are constant.  The actual numbers will vary from church to church, but reaching and/or maintaining these ratios provide a consistent guideline for a church to measure itself. Ratios help establish goals. Ratios help measure effectiveness. Ratios provide a compass to chart direction. Ratios provide solid reference in an ever changing world."

I would add that ratios help not only look at the organizational issues such as leadership, staffing and administration but they also help identify some of the organic issues such as giving, evangelism and service.

Here are a few ratios I have found helpful over the years:

• Staff Ratio: 1:150 - A church should have one full-time pastoral staff member for every 150 adults (over 18 years) in worship.  This does not include secretarial or custodial staff.  We live in an era were churches are way over staffed.  Being overstaffed decreases a church's ability to do focused outreach and evangelism effectively.  A myth many leaders are embracing is that staff grow churches.  Staff usually complicates growth and at best sustains growth.  Resources spent on focus outreach and evangelism are the best investment for the growth of a local church.
• Visitor Ratio: 5:100 - At least 5 of every 100 persons in a Sunday Worship Service should be visitors from the church's ministry area.  Do you track your visitors?  Remember these are not out of town guests but people from your ministry area.
• Evangelism Training Ratio: 1:3 - One of every three adults should receive evangelism training at least once a year.  When is the last time you took 1/3 of your church through some type of evangelism training process?
• Leadership Ratio: 1:5 - One of every five elders or board members should have joined the church within the last two years.  This ratio reveals that you either have a leadership development process that is working effectively or ineffectively.

This book is full of great information to help your church navigate its health issues and to keep you great commission focused. It was the best $5.00 I ever spent!

How are you measuring the quantitative and qualitative health of your ministry?  We at Converge MidAmerica would love to help serve you.

Does Your Church Have a Church Health Team?

One of the terms that describes the role of an elder is an overseer.  The term in the original language is associated with that of being a city administrator or finance manager.  It's usage was further expanded to include spiritual leadership and care with it's association in Jewish literature. One of the roles of elders is to manage the overall health and progress of the church.

How does your church measure it's effectiveness and health?  

Bob Logan, the founder of Coachnet International, introduced me to this concept of a church health team.  Here is his description:

Church Health Team - The church health team is a task force made up of trusted and gifted individuals from your larger leadership community that will help the church move through the NCD process to address the minimum factor, thereby increasing the health of the church. The church health team will be responsible for developing qualitative goals, setting a strategic plan with a time line, charting the progress, dealing with the blockages and providing regular updates to the leadership community and the church. 

Here are the kinds of people you need on the team:

• People who are spiritually mature.
• People who are strategic thinkers.
• People who can see the big picture.
• People who are committed to seeing the church become healthy.

Here are the different roles on the team:

• Team leader: Senior leader who makes sure that progress is being made and the team is functioning in a healthy manner.
• Strategic thinker: Someone who understands systems thinking, sees the big picture and asks the right questions throughout the process.
• Researcher: Someone who loves working with data by collecting, processing and analyzing relevant information to guide the group.
• Intercessor: Someone who can mobilize a prayer team and fosters a spirit of humble dependence throughout the church.
• Communicator: Someone who can maintain healthy communication within the team, the larger leadership community and throughout the church.
• Members of the ministry teams who represent the particular minimum factor you will be addressing. If your minimum factor was “Inspiring Worship” those key leaders need to be part of this team.

A church health team is one of the tools a pastor needs in his tool chest to empower leaders in the right direction in making a healthy and significant impact on the church.   I encourage pastors and planters to annually develop this team, some of the members will be elders and others will be people with specific gifts and out of specific ministry.  This experience will not only impact the church but it will also impact those on the team.

Reflective Questions:

• Does your church have annual ministry goals?
• Does your church have a 3-5 year strategic plan?
• What does the conversation of church health look like in your leadership meetings?
• What are the quantitative numbers you are tracking right now in your ministry?
• How are you measuring the qualitative health of your ministry?

We at Converge MidAmerica would love to assist your church on this journey to health and missional fruitfulness. 

Great Summer Slump Song - Play this in Your Church This Weekend

A farewell song to all those who leave church for the summer from Jeff Kerr on Vimeo.