Life Goes On

Currently I'm working with two churches; one a small, mostly Sr. Adult church and the other a First Baptist in a small town. Both are currently without a pastor. I'm serving as Interim pastor for one (the small church) and helping with pastoral ministries for the the other. The thing that I'm finding true in both is that they are striving to continue doing "business as usual" (whatever that means). They are missing a great opportunity to make some changes that have long been needed. I have a friend who often says, "The best time to make changes is when change is happening." The loss of a pastor is change. Obviously things will be done differently because those who remain have different gift sets, strengths and weaknesses. The key to adapting to the current situation is that someone or some group must step up and take responsibility for leading. That doesn't mean there should be a power struggle. Unless someone steps forward, it is very easy...

Over the Easter weekend and in the week following I have observed an interesting phenomenon among churches. Many of the newer church plants (w/in last 10 years) were extremely intentional about getting un-churched people into their Easter services while the older, more established churches seemed to rely on a "they know where we are" approach. The end result was that most of the "intentional" churches recorded large numbers of guests and, more importantly, recorded many professions of faith. I love my church. I love the pastor, the staff and the people. However, on Easter we only had a slight attendance "bump" and no decisions for Christ. We really didn't plan for any increase in attendance, we did very little in the way of promotion, there was little different about the service except for a couple of extra musical numbers. The pastor preached a solid evangelistic message to a group of people who largely thought of themselves as already being bel...