wishes there was more networking among churches, came across something today that made me think about it. wish i had more space here to write about it, i am going to do a blog post on it, i do believe
So, I am going to place a small blurb on my blog since I mentioned that I was going to do it on my facebook status. I am not sure if networking is the word that I want to use. The reason is that, we studied about networking (cooperation) not long ago at Sunday Night Live and here was the definition:
I believe that if we as churches worked together and focused on the Kingdom of God; that great things would occur. However, too often, we are worried about our own church, our own members and what the numbers look like for us. You know, the good old abc's. If you are not familiar with the abc's, here you go:
attendance
building
cash
At times, I think that we, at Zion, even get into this trap and it drives me crazy. However, I do not want to look at this as a large scale issue today. I want to take a look at it from a very small and microcosmic standpoint. This may seem minute and it may seem crazy, but it got me thinking in a sense ----- how pathetic (in my opinion), we really are and how un-connected we are as churches.
Early this morning, I was taking 10-15 minutes to catch up with individuals on facebook and what they are doing and what is occurring in their lives and I saw a post that mentioned that her daughter was reading the bible ....
Now this caught my eye but not a great deal of it till I saw some of her comments and it "clicked". The comment was the following:
you are the 3rd parent who's mentioned something now! We are focusing on one of the spiritual disciplines each week of January. I love these kiddos!
The individual that made the comment is a children's pastor and she has seen numerous of the parents who attend their church make a comment about reading the bible. I think that this is super cool that she ( parent and children pastor ) is seeing kids reading the bible. The reason that they are seeing them read the bible this week (in my opinion) is that on Sunday morning, the kids had a lesson on navigating the bible
To make this post even longer then it should ...... the church is going through 5 Faith Skills and the 5 skills are the following:
- navigate the bible
- personalize Scripture
- dialogue with God
- articulate faith
- worship with your life
I know that the church will be studying this because we are using the same curriculum that they use and have been using it for awhile. I remember a year and a half ago that I was up at their church for a youth minister meeting and saw information and talked to her husband ( I believe ) about the children ministry / curriculum / characters that make up the story ......
We could go large scale and talk about how we could/should possibly team up and do the ministry together. We could pull our resources together and have more children, more volunteers and more ........
But, once again, on the very small scale ..... I think that it would be cool that we were connected / networked in a small way that our kids at our small downtown church know that there is another church - larger - different denomination could know that kids are learning the same thing and vice-versa.
Thus, when the kids are rubbing elbows with each other at school on Monday - Friday, they could talk about these faith skills. They could ask each other the following questions:
- so, are you finding your way through the bible ? (navigating the bible)
- so, how does the bible story that we had yesterday apply here ? (personalize Scripture)
and so forth .....
I am done rambling.
There are many areas that we need to network and cooperate and many steps that we need to take place. The facebook status and comment from a children pastor prompted me to think of how I wish that we could do even it in the small very baby step format.
I am going to work on some ideas, not only just for that church, not sure if they would be interested, but the overall aspect ....
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