Qualities of a Growing Church

     As some of you know and others may not know, a year and a half ago, my husband Dan was unanimously voted in as the pastor of a small, struggling church in upstate New York.  Being a pastor's wife for that period of time has been exciting, inspiring, and thrilling.  At the same time, there are aspects of ministry that are disheartening, discouraging, and unsettling.  I know that if we focus on the hard and difficult things in life, life will be hard and difficult.  If we choose to focus on only the uplifting, exciting things in life, we aren't living a reality.  As with any life situation, you have to take the good and bad together.  The mountain top experiences are enjoyed and the valleys are endured. 

 

     I haven't posted very much about the church or life in the ministry thus far in my blogging because I wanted to have time to just experience it first.  There have been some things that I'm bursting to write though.  And perhaps they may help someone else along the way.  That is my hope and prayer at least.

 

     When we made the move to Granville, it was not a decision made lightly.  We knew times would be hard, and it would require diligence and determination to accomplish much.  In the first year of being there, we saw over 170 visitors attend!  That was a mountain top experience.  We also knew that most of those visitors were coming to see "the new pastor in town" and see what everyone was talking about.  Many of those visitors did not return even after being visited and sent cards. 

 

     Probably the most encouraging thing to see in the past year and a half is that when we arrived, the average age of attendees was about 69.  Now, the average age is probably 45-47.  We have seen children start attending, families start attending, and baptisms and people getting saved.  Those things are so exciting, uplifting, and encouraging.  But like any ministry, with those encouraging things also come trials, and heartbreaks. 

 

     See, for so many people, church is about attending and receiving a blessing.  It is about coming to God's house and getting fed.  It's about everyone in the family leaving with a feeling of fulfillment. 

 

     And therein lies a great problem.  The vast majority of churches have a large number of people who attend, give, listen to the sermon, and leave.  The number of people who come early, help set up, prepare lessons, preach, minister in song, give people rides, greet people at the doors, make a meal, give tithes, take care of babies, etc....is quite small. 

The smaller the church is, the smaller that number of people is. 

 

  In the past 1 1/2 years, we have had numerous people visit our church, seem excited, and then never return.  Upon visiting them in their home to better get to know them, they all say the same sort of things. 

 

"We really are looking for the church that provides a _______________ (youth group, seniors ministry, choir, women's bible study) and we saw that your church doesn't have that."

Some people say "We really want our four-year-old to have other four-year-olds to be friends with at church and we saw that your church doesn't have any four-year-olds"

or "It's so important for our teenagers to have other teens their age to be with at church."

And those are the qualifications of a good church to them. 

 

As the pastor's wife of a small, but growing church, this is disheartening and discouraging to hear. 

  If I were to only go to a church where there were women my age and in my stage of life, I wouldn't be the pastors wife here. 

  If I were to only go to church where there are children my children's age, I wouldn't be the pastors wife here. 

  If I only went to a church that had a beautiful choir I could participate in, I wouldn't be the pastors wife here. 

 

I could go on, but you understand.  Our society has made it possible to pick and choose churches like we pick and choose what to eat at a restaurant. 

 

But what are the qualities of a biblical church?

Size? Youth group activities? Color of the sidewalks?

 

Of course not.  Our priorities in finding a church should be these:

1. Preaching from the Bible

2. Fulfilling of the Great Commission

 

Of course with those stipulations should also be a strong standard of morality and ethics.  If a church has a huge group of teens, but they aren't teaching the Bible, there is something missing.  If a church preaches from the Bible, but they do no outreach or trying to reach the world for Christ, there is something missing. 

 

I have good friends who have told me they aren't able to find a good church that is able to give them what they're looking for.  As a pastors wife of a small church, I ask the question "WHAT are you 'looking for'?"  If it isn't simply put, a church that is preaching the Bible and fulfilling the Great Commission, than, my friend, you're priorities have gotten skewed. 

 

And I say that kindly.  I would love to lead a huge Christmas program, choir, ladies Bible study, vibrant teen ministry, and all sorts of events.  But first and foremost should be the preaching and the outreach to try to bring the lost to Christ.  Those other things are nice, but secondary. 

 

Next time you attend church, whether it is big or small, look to SERVE, not to be served.  I cannot find a verse in the Bible that says a church must have children my children's age in order to be a good church.  I also cannot find a verse in the bible that says we should be looking for a church where we feel blessed and fed only.  I HAVE seen passages that mention we ought to be serving in the church  (1 Peter 4:10, Ephesians 4:11-16, to mention a few). 

 

So there you have it.  From my heart to yours, wherever you attend, BE ALL THERE. 

SERVE. 

 

Vacation Bible School

 

 The month of July was so full of activities and events.  We decided that this year we would do a Vacation Bible School at our church for the first time. 

Since I am very familiar with the curriculum put out by Quality Speech, we settled on doing their VBS theme "It's a Jungle Out There."

 

One of the ladies in the church volunteered to be in charge of decorating the auditorium to look like a jungle.  That's no easy task, but she did a marvelous job of it!  The only thing she wasn't able to find was a box big enough to pass as a tiki hut.  Dan and I went and found these two boxes in the dumpster of a furniture store.   

 

 

 

They worked perfectly!!

 

I love how it turned out!!

 

The first night of VBS was a success!  Since this is the very first VBS this church has ever done, and since just one year ago when we arrived, there were no children at all, I wasn't setting my hopes too high.  I set a goal to have 10 children there.  I told the workers that if 10 children came each night, that would be an amazing feat. 

But the first night, 20 children came!  God doubled what I hoped for. 

Since I was in charge of everything, Gwen was looked after each night by so many kind people.  I think she enjoyed all of the extra attention.

 

Miss Peggy did an amazing job with the snacks each night.  She stepped in and volunteered to do them right before VBS, and I appreciated her help so much.

 

I told Dan that we needed two team captains- one for the red team and one for the blue team.  Since we had no volunteers for those jobs, we took them.  The week consisted of lots of good-natured ribbing and contests to see who would win. 

I had an inspirational idea to have the children put their handprints on white tee shirts for us to wear on the final night of VBS when we would see whose team won.  As you can  see, I was quite confident that I would come out the victor. 

 

See, each night, my team brought more pennies for the offering, my team sang nice and loud, my team said their memory verses, and also won more games.  BUT I wasn't anticipating that Dan would go to the bank the last day and get $25 worth of pennies and have workers distribute them to his team.  The little sneak.  So, I ended up with the pie in the face.

 

 

It worked out perfectly though that the workers who made the pie (out of whipped topping), made a second pie just for Dan. 

 

It was a great week of Bible School.  Several of the children begged us to please have Bible school every week of the summer. Although that's definitely not going to happen, it's exciting that five of the children who came to VBS are now coming to Sunday school each Sunday.

 

 

In other side news, our chickens are AWESOME!  They lay double yolks all the time, and finally (today being the first day) they are all 20 laying.  So exciting.   

I hope you all are having as awesome a summer as we are!  Today we are headed off to New Hampshire to attend the wedding of one of Dan's childhood friends. 

 

Have a wonderful weekend!