Friday, July 29, 2005

slow learner

How to talk about church membership in our contemporary world? How to raise the bar around participation and values, while being open-handed and hospitable? I’m learning. Slowly.

I’m learning
1 … every few months to offer a newcomers cafe …. nothing structured, just a time to eat and a few get to know you questions.
2 … every few months to offer a membership evening.
3 …. to start by asking people what they are praying for about the church. You see, membership evenings can be “sales” evenings. But Opawa is actually a very human church. We’ve got lots of warts. Asking people what they’re praying for about the church gives me feedback on some warts, and reduces the “sales” pitch factor.
4 … to talk about the journey we’re on, including our Denominational past. I mean, we as humans, we’re all shaped deeply by our parents habits. Apply that to church and we have lots of strange corporate habits. So talking about our past might make it easier to understand our strangeness.
5 … offer concrete ways to participate. I give people a participation survey form. I try to keep it to one page, but offer lots of ways to get involved. This goes into a database. And it can be given back to them annually, to allow them change and flex and growth.
6 …. finish with Ello, kids lego. Invite people to use Ello to make their prayer for the church. People talk, people laugh, people explain, and it’s a spiritually real way to end.

(Context. I ran a membership evening last nite.)

Posted by steve at 06:01 PM

4 Comments

  1. cool site

    http://theway.blog.com

    Comment by mojo turbo — July 30, 2005 @ 7:14 am

  2. Do you mind if your ideas are borrowed (and sourced as so) and recontextualised at Napier? We currently have nothing in place for newcomers or membership etc and this would be great to throw into the pot as we wonder how we might do it up here.

    Comment by Andrew — July 30, 2005 @ 9:32 am

  3. sure Andrew. especially if it is re-contextualised. I can send you the written information I give out also if you want – a doublesided A4 with some art and bible stuff.

    Comment by steve — July 30, 2005 @ 9:35 am

  4. nice job. i’m planning to come back here in the future. greedy boy love or not: , Small Girl becomes Green Opponents in final collective pair double or not , when Plane Expect Pair Love bad plane becomes memorizing chips in final

    Comment by caleb taylor — December 4, 2005 @ 5:16 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.