Whose Initiatives Determine the Church’s Direction?
I don’t know if y’all noticed it, but on Easter Sunday we had 14 young people up on the chancel for Young People’s Moments in worship. A lot of this is due to the efforts of Deb Murphy who, this past fall, started a children’s class for the first time in several years, and of young parents and grandparents who’ve started bring such folk. (Yes, there are such things as young grandparents.)
Frequently (maybe always?) a church’s direction is not determined by the pastor or pastors, but by the willingness of people in the body to step up and pursue a direction of ministry. This is a lot healthier for a congregation anyway; having the pastor pursue initiatives often means that, once the pastor leaves, the initiative collapses. Last fall, Dennis and I were pursuing a direction of starting an alternative service for the neighborhood folks in the congregation; the congregation even passed funds in the current year’s budget to do so. However, the Transition Team (wisely, I think) decided that such an effort needed ownership from the congregation, and together we decided to take a longer view of working towards such a service.
The immediate opportunities are with children and youth; some of those opportunities may indeed prove to be strong ones. So for the last three months I’ve mentioned to the Board the possibility of using some of the budget for the new worship service to take on a part time staff person for building on the work that’s been started. Given the fact that Open Table, our new initiative with the GLBT community, has identified certain needs in this area in the Twin Cities and are working to pursue it, it seems like an opportunity, congregationally based, on which we need to take a good, strong look.
Grace and peace,
Bob
