Open your narthex and say, ‘Ahhh’

Craig Adams dug an old file off his hard drive and slapped it up on his blog. Fortunately for us, it is a goodie.

The author of the article asks how we can tell if our church is sick. His answer:

If your minister’s or pastor’s presence and involvement are virtually essential to its worship, teaching, leadership and administration your church’s days are numbered. This is the primary cause of sickness and even death in twenty first century churches. All over this country such churches are dying. And the tragedy is this – most of these churches are dying at their own hands.

How many of are truly working with all our strength to make ourselves replaceable?

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3 Responses

  1. I’m glad you liked it, John.

  2. This is something I worry about. In seminary they teach us a lot about how to do ministry, but not a whole lot about how to get people who have never done ministry to join you in the work. I say this as I got up 2 hours early to finish the monthly newsletter. Part of me thinks this is only temporary – we are hiring an administrative assistant starting in January – but I probably took a lot more leadership away from the congregation when I came than I should have.

  3. Katie,

    My limited experience and observation suggests this is one of the great challenges of ministry. There is always a good reason to take something on. You can always justify it – especially when the alternative is that something is left undone.

    Get some rest. Grace and peace to you.