Pastors

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How can I manage pastoral anxiety?

Pastor Bob is not doing great. He’s guessing the stress he’s feeling is not healthy. The feeling leaves him a little insecure, and he wonders whether he’s leading Green Pastures Church as well as he could be. 

Bob – like so many others – is a solo pastor. Sure, he has a team of co-leaders around him. They are good hearted people, faithful Christians, long term members, volunteers. 

Bob gets on well with all of them, although there’s one person – Charlie – whom he’s finding a little challenging lately. Charlie has a strong personality and doesn’t mind telling Bob what the church really should be doing. Bob feels pressured. Charlie has even said Bob should be doing more: more contact with church members, develop outreach opportunities, shorten his sermons a bit, give better application. The last time Charlie and Bob chatted, it was cordial enough, but Bob sensed they weren’t making headway. He guesses Charlie is thinking the same. Bob knows that when Charlie talks, people listen. And what if he’s talking? What if he’s sharing his thoughts about Bob?

Some nights Bob lies awake turning it all over. He’s really tired and needs sleep, but it doesn’t come easily. When he wakes he seems more exhausted than ever. There’s so much to do but his capacity is waning. And it’s not getting any better…

Bob wonders who he can talk to… 

He doesn’t want to burden his wife: she has enough on her plate with her own work and wrangling the kids. Bob doesn’t feel that comfortable talking with her about another Green Pastures leader, anyway. That could get awkward for both of them.

He considers talking with some other Green Pastures leaders. He’s hesitant because they all have good relationships with Charlie. Talking with them might mess with those loyalties. Besides, what would they think? He decides it’s all too risky.

There are other pastoral colleagues nearby, but Bob wonders whether they’d see him as a pastoral battler, or worse: a failure. In a weird way he’s thankful he’s not that close to any of them.

So along with the stress and confusion he feels, Bob is feels isolated and a little anxious. How can he sort this out? How can he find clarity? How can he unravel all his mixed emotions and complicated relationships?

Bob stares at his coffee, and wonders “is this what ministry is supposed to be?” Bob leaves the thought hanging. He doesn’t have any answers.

Whereas many in ordained ministry attest to fulfilment and joy in their calling, there are notable others reporting a low sense of well-being, feeling isolated, accessing counselling for strained personal and ministerial relationships, or requesting psychiatric referral or therapy for mental health issues.

Gubi, Korris & West, Reflective Practice Groups for Clergy,
University of Chester Press, 2020 p.57

This is where Professional Pastoral Supervision can really help Bob. Regular supervision sessions can provide a safe space for Bob to work through his situation. Over time, Bob can unravel the tangled bits and pieces, finding some clarity on how to move forward. 

Supervision sessions could help Bob

  • Rediscover his core calling. The reflexive sessions helping him to articulate what matters most and how he can serve his church best
  • Safely explore the situation with Charlie, discerning better responses and reviewing his perceptions about Charlie in the confidential context supervision provides
  • Apply his theological framework to develop better pastoral practice, working through new ideas and approaches that work better
  • Review his workload and consider how he might do things differently

Pastoral Supervision does not provide easy answers or quick fixes. A Supervisor will work with Bob’s ministry philosophy, respect his theological emphases, along with his church context, governance and polity. Professional Pastoral Supervision is an ideal context for personal pastoral development.

Read this to find out how Professional Pastoral Supervision can help you, or slip me a message or email. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to work something out that helps you keep moving forward in healthy and sustainable ways.

Dave Groenenboom
Paraklesis Supervision
Horsfield Bay, NSW

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Find Clarity in Ministry: Embrace Pastoral Supervision

People in ministry often say they don’t have time to unravel the complex pastoral issues that come their way. There are too many people to visit, too many meetings, there are sermons to plan, ministries to lead, contacts to follow up – and none of these fit neatly into organised blocks in the schedule … it never ends and it never seems to get better.

What tends to happen is that because we’re so time poor, when we sense there are complexities bearing down upon us, we’ll often push them out of our immediate awareness by just keeping busy and trying to get it all done.

The stress of all this will often work its way out in some other way: frayed nerves, short temper, irritability, a drink too many, other escapist behaviours …

This is why I love pastoral supervision.

Supervision provides a welcoming and courageous space where pastors can reflect on their work to learn how to do it differently and better.

Supervision is welcoming because it’s an intentional interruption to ministry’s constant demands. As I step into a supervision session, I have permission to pause, to breathe, to relax, and settle into a time of intentional reflection. I will meet with a friend (my supervisor) who comes beside me with an open heart, an accepting attitude, and a non judgemental spirit.

Supervision is courageous because I can wade into whatever is weighing me down as honestly as I can. I will be encouraged to see wider perspectives on the issues and on how I might move forward more effectively. My supervisor will encourage me to see what I really need to know, as opposed to what I merely want to hear. So supervision is a place for me to learn. I will be encouraged to own and address some of the harder lessons I might otherwise avoid. Supervision keeps me honest to myself and to my calling as a minister of the Gospel.

It’s no surprise that some of the most common feedback I receive is that supervision gives greater clarity on complex issues … it to find better ways to move ahead … it open up new perspectives on things that had been significant burdens.

That all sounds pretty positive – but here’s the thing: These are precisely the sort of conversations that pastors rarely have, and yet they are also precisely the sort of conversations they need to have. They bring such value to ministry and pastoral work. They help us bring our ministry practice closer to the theology and values we espouse. They can give new insights into how the Gospel is embodied in ministry – and that can be very transformational!

Where appropriate, I use a redemptive cycle of theological reflection. This method breaks down confusing or complex issues, allowing us to better hear how the Gospel of Jesus speaks to the situation at hand.

I’ll give some detail on the Redemptive Cycle in a future post – but for now, we can all imagine that where pastors can approach their ministry with greater clarity, more insightfully working through Gospel values, they’ll likely be less stressed and working more sustainably. That is a huge win!

Would you like to know more? Email me and we’ll discuss how to take it forward.

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Pastor: You Are Not Alone

Pastoral ministry in a local church can be a place of real joy and transformation. It can also have its share of confusion, isolation and on occasions, exhaustion. All this can have real impacts on personal well-being, resilience and ministry effectiveness.

Thankfully, Pastoral Supervision is just the place to talk about it all confidentially and supportively.

Pastoral Supervision is a safe and courageous space to reflect on your ministry, how it might be impacting you and those close to you, and to learn how to do things differently.

That’s why I use the word “paraklesis” – it’s a biblical Greek word which means to call beside, or to come beside another. This is what happens in Supervision: your supervisor will come beside you, help you reflect on how things are going, and help you find clarity amidst all the business and confusion.

Obviously, face to face sessions are wonderful, but technology offers terrific opportunities even when two people cannot be together. I can deliver sessions over Zoom, too, so even if you’re interstate or in a regional area, it’s all workable.

I’m based on the NSW Central Coast, and have 40 years experience in varied local church and organisational contexts, so we’ll likely connect well no matter which context you’re in right now.

‘Like’ this page, and email me if you’d like to explore how this can work for you.

David Groenenboom

Pastoral Supervisor

Paraklesis Ministries

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Managing Ministry Creep: Supervision Strategies

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of preaching at the installation service of our new pastor. As I prepared for the service, I was reflecting on the tasks any local church pastor might do on a typical week…

…respond to emails, make pastoral calls, address church leadership matters, service planning, sermon prep, connecting with the community, supporting volunteers, keep abreast of what’s happening in the world, train leaders, facilitate discipleship, review ministry programs, meet with a few ministry leaders, Safe Church training, engage new members, connect with visitors, preach a cracker of a sermon, keep learning, keep growing, make sure you take your day off, be a model parent, have a great family, find regular time for prayer and Bible reading…

No doubt, there are a few things I’ve missed, and maybe it’s just me, but ministry seems to be getting more and more demanding. When I was in local church ministry, I found the best way to prepare for Sunday was to have a day and a half of largely uninterrupted time to complete the background exegetical work and to formulate my Sunday message. The problem was getting (and retaining!) that uninterrupted space! The phone keeps ringing. Emails keep arriving. Text messages keep lighting up the phone. And there’s the gloriously noisy Kid’s Ministry just a room or two away…

I’ve started to calling the ever expanding list of pastoral responsibilities ‘ministry creep’. No matter how well planned your schedule is, there are interruptions. No matter how clear your job description is, there are always other things that find their way into your task list. Murphy’s Law: the list of things you have to do always exceeds the time you have allocated to do them. We all know this.

Needless to say, fragmentation and challenges of time management are par for the ministry course. The pressure may not always be intense, but it is constant. It’s hardly surprising, then, that pastors often struggle to stay grounded and keep their head above the waters of schedule and interruption.

Today’s Australian pastor is a hemisphere and two millennia away from the NT Church. Even so, Paul encouraged his younger pastor friend, Timothy, “keep your head in all situations”, “watch your life and doctrine closely”, “train yourself to be godly” (2 Tim 4:5; 1 Tim 4:7, 15-16).

My question is:

How do I do this?

What regular process do I have to keep watch over myself?

How do I train myself to be godly?

And can I even do any of this effectively on my own?

This is where regular pastoral supervision is really important. No doubt, there’s great value in reflecting on your own – we all should do this (and here are some tips to get you started) – but I am never going to have the sort of objectivity I need to really keep myself honest, or to ask myself the hard questions, or even just to probe a bit and notice something that might stand out clearly to another person.

Supervision allows me to step outside of my schedule, to step back from pastoral busyness and ministry creep, and in the caring presence of another, keep watch over myself better. Supervision helps me consider how ministry is impacting my soul, to consider how I can do better in my role, and how I can better engage in my wider ministry context.

Supervision will not make ministry creep go away, but it will more than likely help you approach the demands of your ministry with greater clarity. It will help to take you deeper into your calling, and to be more intentional about the care you bring to the people God has given you.

Ultimately, supervision will bring you back to what matters most: doing ministry better, centring our ministry on honouring Jesus, nurturing his people to maturity, and stimulating his church to embody the Kingdom of God to his world.

When Supervision helps me sort through the clutter and approach my work with greater clarity, it makes sense to make it a priority.

Action steps:

  1. Email me here to discuss how regular supervision can help your ministry.
  2. Speak to your church leadership about making this a regular priority. If you’d like me to connect with your leadership I’d be open to exploring this.
  3. Check out the list of other Supervisors accredited with the Australian Association of Supervisors

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Church Health & the Challenge for Leaders

Striving for church health has some very challenging implications. In future posts I’ll look at the implications for the church as the body of Christ, and following that how striving for how we engage with the world around us. Make no mistake: the call to church health is not for the faint hearted. It is as demanding and unrelenting as it is a path toward maturity and spiritual formation.

What I want to mention now is the implication for leadership. There are lots of things that work toward church health, but if leadership is not fully supportive of and engaged in the pursuit of Scripture’s call to church health, nothing else the church does will be sustainable.

At this point the sobering reality is that for churches in my own denomination, NCD results show the area we consistently struggle in is this very area: leadership and discipleship. Is it that we don’t want to do it? Or we are not interested? Or we just don’t know how? Unsure. Maybe it’s more something that we’ve never really been skilled to do. Some will look back with longing eyes to the good old days of full on catechism process, where children commenced catechism classes at age 12 or 13 and finished at about age 18, hopefully with a profession of faith. I acknowledge that this system created some reasonable depth in understanding our confessional perspective. I also acknowledge that where this is no longer practised there has been little else to grow an appreciation for our reformed confessional heritage. An additional and more serious complication is there have been few systematic examples of intentional, coherent and effective discipleship processes.

The call to church health is not for the faint hearted. It is demanding and unrelenting

There is little sense in belting ourselves around the head because of this. What we need to do is recognise how we pull up short, and then do better. Fellow elders and pastors: this is where we must shoulder God’s call. Paul expresses it this way: “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” (Colossians 1:28–29, NIV)

Paul was consumed with the goal of bringing the church to maturity in Christ. He placed this call before the leaders of the church in Collosse. Presenting everyone mature in Christ was the focus of every proclamation, admonition and teaching. This was the ‘heavy lifting’ ministry of heavy lifting which consumed all his energy.

Big question: is this the focus of your ministry? Are these the goals you are striving for as a pastor or as an elder? Is this the focus of your church council? Is this what the people in your church would say is the priority of your leadership?

This is such a humbling call, friends. I am so far from this goal, and the shortcomings I mentioned above are clearly there in the congregation I serve. What we are doing is making some changes this coming year. It might seem a cop out to just talk about ‘plans’ at this point. We all know what really matters is whether plans get implemented, and whether that implementation yields desired outcomes. In the next post I’ll go through some of our specific plans for 2014. For now, I’m praying our ongoing discussion and collaboration will help us become better builders of discipling culture. It would be tremendous if we could do this work together.


Q: what are your suggestions for building a better discipling culture? Leave a comment and become part of the discussion.

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Why your church needs effective structures

Night watch

In my last post I spoke of the need for church health, and how God changes churches one life, one decision at a time. It would be nice if all that growth would happen automatically.

Problem: growth and health are never automatic. If we go back to my vegetable garden analogy, we’re reminded how you have to do a lot of work to get good growth – especially in Perth. We had to turn 10 square metres of sand into arable land. We added all sorts of stuff: Organic matter. All round fertiliser. Bentonite clay to help the sand clump into something like loam. Bags of sheep manure (apologies to my neighbours). On the top we mulched with nitrogen rich lucerne hay. Add to that more water than our rainwater tank could hold, and we were starting to head in the right direction.

We did this because (A) we looked at what we had, and (B) we knew what it needed to be. Once we knew those things, we could work out (C) what we had to do to our garden to get to where we wanted to be. Through it all our goal was to create the best environment for growth.

We can use a similar process when we’re thinking about bringing our churches to health. It is the task of the church, and in particular the leaders of the church, to set the best environment for growth. So leaders need to (A) take a realistic look at how things are, and (B) listen to God’s word to determine where they should be. Once they know these things they can (C) develop strategies to reach their goal.

I actually think this method is pretty helpful. (A) – where are we? (B) – where do we need to be? (C) – what do we need to do to get there? Sure, there are lots of little things to complicate the picture: what factors have led us to this point? What barriers might we encounter in the future? What limitations do we face? But the basic method is still helpful.

And just so we’re clear, moving toward health is more than a matter of method. The questions of A, B & C are best addressed in a spirit of humble dependence on God, of prayerful searching of God’s will, and a deep desire to honour Jesus and bring his new creation to expression. So we need pastors, elders and leaders with more than a smart methodology. They need to be people with a Gospel heart, who are rich in the Word, and filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom. People who can honestly assess their current situation, and interpret relevant factors and influences.

When leaders like this seek to move a church toward health, they will be wrestling with the need to have the most effective structures, systems and ministries. They will be seeking to create the best context they can for growth and health. They will be working for a church that embraces change.

The church needs leaders who seek the best context for growth and health


We all know change like this is hard. We will need to let go of some things we love. Things that make us comfortable. Mostly it is hard work, but if these are the changes God calls us to, they are right and they are good.

‘The Night Watch’ is a colossal painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. Measuring around 3.5 x 4.4 metres it dominates an entire room in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. The painting was completed in 1642 – the height of the Dutch golden age. Over the next 300 years, the painting was lovingly preserved and maintained. The custodians of the painting no doubt had the best intentions, but all those coats of lacquer darkened to tones of the painting so much that people thought it was a night scene, hence the popular title. After Word War II, however, the painting was restored to reveal its well lit early morning hues.

Here’s my point: for the first 300 years the restorers had the absolute best intentions. They were the experts in their day. No one better for the job, and no better methods than the ones they employed. But in time more effective preservation methods were discovered, and the old methods were dispensed with. See, the method was not the important thing. What really mattered was the end result, and the beauty of the work.

Sometimes Churches focus on the wrong thing. And the methods, the well worn practices become the focus. These things might not be wrong in themselves, but when they become the focus, the beauty of what needs to be seen can be so easily obscured. What started as clear as day might end up dark as night. And then we need the courage to undergo a work of restoration and transformation. Hard work. And those focused primarily on the traditional methods and practices may find this an uncomfortable and disturbing process. But at the end of the day, our prayer is that the work of the Master will be seen for what it really is, and that he will receive the praise which rightfully belongs to him.

Q: Are you aware of methods and practices in your church which obscure the Master’s work? What might you do to address this?

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How can I help my church to be more healthy?

Health Alert

It is surprising how often we talk about what God wants our churches to do. Every leadership meeting, every regional council, every Synod – we all discuss what God would have us do.

Implementation is where we tend to fall down. That may be true, but the question of your own personal resolve and desire is more basic. So, let me ask: Do you really want your church to be a more healthy place? Do you really want to grow? If so, the question really becomes one of how to bring growth and health about.

There are no easy answers here. No pat formulas.

When it comes to personal health there are some basic rules to follow: don’t smoke, maintain a healthy diet, exercise regularly, don’t barrack for Collingwood, etc. When it comes to specifics, however, what I need to do to become healthy might be very different to what you need to do.

It’s the same with church growth and health. There are general things every church should be mindful of. Here, tools like NCD can be really helpful, and Jack de Vries can help you with all of that. But once we get past that general picture, specific strategies will vary a lot.

Some think you can just copy what has worked well in some other context into their own. I am not convinced. For a start, I am not ‘him’. My church is not their church. Their local community is not mine. Maybe that other church would even do it differently now. So, be careful about bolting someone else’s program or strategy onto your own context. This rarely works.

So, back to the question: what are some of the general things to keep in mind about growing disciples and church health? First: God brings his church to health one life at a time. One personal context of change and transformation after another. Programs and things have their place, but the better strategies always focus on people. Nothing changes until people start to change. 

 

God brings his church to health one life at a time

 

Which brings us to a second question: how do people change? How will Gospel transformation start to be seen more and more? Answer: one decision at a time. Obviously, this needs to start in our own heart. There’s no point in expecting other people to change, to grow, to follow and obey if I am not interested in doing that myself. 

Some think this focus on personal decision and desire displaces God’s sovereignty. I think this is crazy logic. Here’s why: when it comes to obedience and growing as a Christian, God’s sovereignty rarely operates outside of human responsibility.

What I mean is that you can pray for growth and to be more like Christ all you like, but if you do not get out off the couch and do something, you will never change. People who are always waiting for God to make them grow or to change them on the inside, who are not prepared to do anything about it, are just being lazy. Lazy Christians and lukewarm churches do nothing to show the glorious wonder of God’s transforming grace before his watching world. The light of his word, and his recreative work through his Son is too often hidden under the bucket of human indifference.

So your response, your obedience, your desire for your church to be more healthy is critical. Every time you decide to do something to honour Jesus, every time you decide to turn you back on sin and its chaos, every time you decide to respond with compassion, every time you obey God’s word and follow his call, every time you put the needs of others before your own, Gospel transformation becomes more visible. People see it. The church sees it. The watching world sees it. And in the end it brings glory to God (see 1 Pet 2:12).

This last thought has enormous implications for churches and individual Christians, but I’ll have to leave that for another time.

For now, I want us to embrace that thought that change and growth is not only God’s expectation, the normal way he brings people to growth is though his Spirit drawing people to change their behaviour and their attitudes one person, one decision at a time.

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Forgiveness is being honest with people

Forgiveness, by its very nature, always involves people. It is people who get hurt. It is people who do the hurting. Forgiveness is always relational.

There are some terrible things that have happened to people, but they don’t need to be forgiven. In January 2011 an intense storm cell hovered over the Queensland city of Toowoomba. On any other day, Toowoomba hardly has a creek to its name, but that day it flooded so badly that cars were washed down the main street. The waters rushed down the range, and obliterated several small towns in the valley below. Lives were lost and livelihoods were dashed. Who was to blame? Who did this? No one did it. It was no one’s fault. No one was to blame. As Lewis Smedes reminds us, if there’s no one to blame, there’s nothing to forgive (The Art of Forgiving, p.77).

Forgiveness is only relevant when others are involved. In some ways this makes sense. It may be easy to remember hurts that others have done to us. At other times, who those ‘others’ are will sometimes catch us off guard. We’re not always ready to admit that sometimes the hurt has come from our own actions. So sometimes we have to forgive ourselves. On other occasions, hurt comes from a group of people. Truth is, forgiving is always messy. And you can be sure the more people are involved, the messier it gets.

people are always in the mix

So, when it comes to forgiveness, people are always in the mix. Real people. Real lives. Real pain and real grief. It’s easy to lose sight of this, and it’s often convenient to avoid it. It’s easier, if we have hurt someone, to just think about ‘issues’ and ‘events’ and ‘what went wrong’. When we avoid the people in the equation, though, we dehumanise the pain. This is sin on three counts:

We sin against them, because we are not willing to see their hurt, or recognise our part in it.

We sin against ourselves: when we refuse to see the pain we have brought to others we deny ourselves the grace of being forgiven.

And we sin against God. It’s not just that he wants us to forgive. It’s more that his plan in Jesus is to raise us to a new life and a better way. God wants our lives, through Jesus, to express his better grace. He deeply wants his ‘giveness‘ to come to expression in our lives. Paul says as much when he writes “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children, and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 4:32ff)

We have to be honest about the impact of our actions on people, and their impact on us. If we fail to see the people in the equation, sin, wrongdoing, and guilt will have its way with us. And guilt is such a tireless tormentor.

Which is easier, to just focus on the issues, or to recognise the people involved and the pain they are going through? Which is better?

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Forgiveness: Let’s Start at the Beginning

Where does forgiveness start? This is an important question if we’re to get forgiveness right and do forgiveness well.

I think forgiveness starts with God and his nature. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This very act says so much about the God we worship and the forgiveness he calls us into. It reminds us that God is a giver, One who at core seeks to bring life and beauty and joy into being. In the evening of each creation day God said “it is good.” On the sixth day, having created human beings, he said “it is very good”. At a very primary level, we understand that God gives himself, expends himself so that life can abound and people can thrive.

Cornelius Plantinga says “the first act in the world’s drama is God’s act of creation and sustaining ‘all things visible and invisible,’ out of a generous desire to enlarge the realm of being, to bestow life and goodness on others, and to assist others to flourish in the realm created for them.” [Engaging God’s World, p.44]

…forgiveness starts with God and his nature…

This tells us deep things about God: his core disposition is one of love, a desire to bless, to enrich, to cause to flourish, to bring life and beauty. There are a million other implications to pursue here about what the church should focus on, about how Christians should conduct themselves, and what defines the mission of the church.

What I want us to think about are the implications of this for forgiveness. This is very important, because it is easy for us to view forgiveness simply in a pragmatic sense: we want to forgive because it resolves a problem. We do it because it works. That is not bad, but it could be better.

When forgiveness is rooted in the character of God, and defined by his work in creation, we see something else. We wee that forgiveness is about bringing blessing into lives. When we go the full cycle of forgiveness, we don’t just resolve a problem, we bless each other.

That is a challenging thought. You may think of the trouble and grief that is part of your life, and seriously question whether you will ever be able to forgive. You may wonder whether you could ever see your way clear to bless the person or persons that have brought this pain upon you. Sometimes the terrors and evils perpetrated on us are so big and ugly that it seems impossible to contemplate any positive thought toward those who have done them. I agree – but for now, can we agree to leave that tension where it is, and come back to later?

The bottom line is that forgiveness is perhaps the most grace affirming, life enriching work you will ever do. It’s no wonder that if we’re going to do it well, we’ll need the sort of grace and strength and help that we can only get from Jesus.

Can you see forgiveness as ultimately a desire to see the other blessed? How does this challenge you or comfort you?

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Why Church? – Good Question…

Recently, I preached a series of sermons called ‘Love My Church’. I was seeking to develop a very positive mindset toward the church, and why we should engage more deeply with it. That got me asking another set of questions, and those questions have grown into a series of posts…

For those who don’t know God…

I wonder where the church fits in the experience and awareness of the general community. Maybe the question is not one of ‘where’ but ‘whether’… I guess we have all heard the cliched responses that in the mind of the general community the church is irrelevant, or invisible, or worse. Church leaders have asked often their congregations “if our church was to disappear overnight, would we be missed?”. The question my be cliched, but the answer often troubles us, and that may be for good reason.

For those who know God…

You might expect that for those who know God and follow His Son, Jesus, there would be a more ringing endorsement. Here, the feedback varies. Some Christian love their church, and dedicate much time and energy to making their local church a really terrific place.

But how many of us would say that they love their church, and that meeting with other Christians ‘at church’ is the highlight of their week? And if their answer is not resoundingly positive, what are the factors there?

what we think about the church has enormous impact on how healthy it is

Maybe how we talk about church exposes something of the issue:

People ‘go to church’

People ‘get fed with the word at church’

People ‘have fellowship at church’

People ‘are blessed by the ministries, programs and services their church provides’

Pastors ‘work at church, serve their church, and prepare for the services to be held at the church’

My thought is that what we think about the church has enormous impact on how healthy it is, and how well it does what God calls it to do in the community and the world.

The next posts will explore these thoughts a little more.

Love to hear your thoughts…