Center for Congregations

Hello everyone!

DaveBourgeois — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:55:44 GMT

I enjoyed our time together last week - you all made me feel quite welcome and appreciated. Please feel free to post questions to me on this board regarding the topics we discussed. Remember, you can get many of the resources I discussed from the web page I created for the workshop at http://godinthetubes.com.

Dave

Shane Hipps materials

DaveBourgeois — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:14:35 GMT

Some of you have asked for a copy of the Shane Hipps video that I presented last week. Unfortunately, I cannot provide that for you, but I can point you to a resource online. Shane Hipps writes a blog where much of the same material is discussed. You can find the blog at http://shanehipps.blogspot.com/.

Welcome!

Kara Faris — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:15:23 GMT

Hello and welcome to the Internet Ministry Strategies for Your Congregation forum moderated by Dave Bourgeois. This forum serves as a continuation of the conversation that was started on March 19 and 20 in Ft. Wayne and Indianapolis. This is the place to ask Dave questions about his workshop and internet ministry or ask the Center for Congregations your questions about internet use in your congregation or congregational resources. Dave will be moderating this forum March 23 - 27, 2009.

Being a Finisher

Mark J. DeVries — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:32:11 GMT

Tomorrow morning I'll roll out of bed, drink a lot of water, eat a banana or two, and run a marathon (26.2 miles) with 20,000 of my closest friends. During the days of the most intense training, people ask me the logical questions, "Are you nuts? Why do you do this to yourself?"

I guess the only response is that I've decided that, no matter how slow I am (and oh, I am SLOW), I want to be a finisher. I want to be awake in the kind of way that only happens on a long journey that will have moments of great satisfaction and moments (okay, maybe hours) of challenge and discomfort; But most of all I love the title, "finisher."

Like you, I want to finish this race of ministry well. I know I've got no gifts for sprinting...in ministry or in running (I've tried both and failed miserably). Some people are the Michael Phelps of the running world. I'll be satisfied just to be one one the crowd that steadily fails forward until one day, in God's economy, God adds all those failures together and turns them into sweet victory.

And just like at the end of the run tomorrow, when I joins the multitides singing around the thone, I'm sure I'll be late (maybe Susan will be there to ambush me again!).

Conference's Immediate Impact

nate@gracemooresville.org — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:22:51 GMT

Hi Mark, Just wanted to tell you that I was able to put some of the information gained from our conference to immediate use in my local congregation. The particular bit on building a network of caring adults was the focus of my thoughts. Our major text for the morning's lesson was Deuteronomy 6:4-9. It's interesting that the task of passing on the faith in that passage wasn't given to youth pastors but to parents. (I'm being a little silly with that comment, but it does demonstrate I think how both parents and the church have been guilty of giving the job of discipleship over to "professional" youth workers.) It was just a really cool thing to be sitting in the conference knowing that I was speaking on the Deuteronomy passage the next week and feeling like I was getting tons of ideas from the conference that helped shape my thinking for that upcoming message. Also, I will be presenting an overview of the book and the conference to our church staff in January. Anyway, nothing earth-shattering here...just a little feedback. Thanks again.

Steeple Chase vs Climate Control

Mitch M — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:20:04 GMT

On page 30 of “Sustainable Youth Ministry” you use the steeple blowing off the church as an example of how a church responds to a clear and urgent problem. In chapter 6 you write about changing culture by having positive stories to tell and not being negative like on page 86. How do you go about creating a positive culture around the ministry while at the same time communicate clearly the problems that the ministry faces and create a sense of urgency? Looking at the examples on page 86, when is it appropriate to let people know that attendance is down or that there are not enough teachers so that the congregation understands the need and urgency for resources? And when do you focus on creating a positive culture?

I’ll take feedback from anyone, not just Mark

Worship

sblossom — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:15:06 GMT

Hi Mark! Thank you for such an excellent conference. I found your presentation and method of presentation very helpful. I really enjoyed the day. One of my questions is how do we help cultivate a love for worshipping God within youth? The first youth ministries that I worked with seemed to have this sense naturally. The youth whom I'm serving with now, have a heart for mission and serving, but I don't get the feeling that many of them really want to be worshipping God. I have started working more intentionally with our children, but I love the youth and would really appreciate some ideas about how to help them feel connected to worshipping God in whatever ways are meaningful to them (and also hopefully in worship with the congregation as a whole). I have a few ideas, but I'd be grateful for your insights. God's blessings upon you~

Squaring the Corners

Mark J. DeVries — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:07:54 GMT

I'm reminded at the end a long day why so many youth ministries fail to "square their corners." The rabbit trails are just too tempting, the conversations too complicated, and so we give up and hurry up. But churches that fail to address foundational questions, like who owns the monkey of responsibility for what parts of the ministry, will end up paying for their impatience on the long run. We love working with churches; we love serving as the "voluntary annoyers," who work as fast as possible but never faster than is really needed. And sometimes the slowness of building right can be a frustrating ride. And then I remember the ox...Proverbs 14:4.

Let's Talk

Mark J. DeVries — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:13:25 GMT

One of the big discoveries we've made in working with churches is the power of collaboration, of conversation that helps youth workers and churches make their new learnings actionable.

Today, I have the privilege of working with our friends at Christ Church (UMC) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, a church that is launching an off-campus student center...the first of its kind that I've seen. There are plenty of churches that have student centers, and there are a number of high quality outreach centers, like Rocketown in Nashville. What hasn't been successfully implemented is an off-campus outreach center that is clearly anchored to a specific church.

Chirst Church has an unusual kingdom vision, an eagerness not just to build their own ministry but to reach out to students who might never darken the door of a church.

In our times together, we help with the midwifing process, trusting that God is birthing something and that we get to work as coaches, encouragers, and witnesses of that good work.

One of my partners in this venture, in addition to the incredible church staff, is my friend Roger Thompson, the guy in our country who knows more about youth spaces than anyone I know. There's lots to talk about when it comes to facitilies for kids. And I'm happy to open that conversation today too.

Idea for seminar

Tony Portell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:03:27 GMT

We will be attending the tech seminar coming up at Grace Community Church. I think it would also be a great help to do a seminar just on the web. We have used the internet for marketing our church, communicating with the congregation, reaching out to the community, surveys, online giving, small groups and prayer.

There are so many practical things that can help a congregation that cost little to nothing. I think we have used the web effectively and would be happy to share our story.

Thanks,

Tony Portell
Life Church
www.lifechurchindy.com
317 410-1010

Let's Get It Started

Mark J. DeVries — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:12:47 GMT

Friends,

I'm excited to continue our conversation from a couple weeks ago. We had a marvelous time knocking around the ideas related to Sustainable Youth Ministry, and now we can take a little time to make those broad principles maybe a little more applicable to your unique situations.

So I welcome your questions and push back. The principles we talked about, at this point, are "partly right," but they will require this kind of back-and-forth conversation to give them the kind of texture that really makes sense in the worlds you're doing ministry in.

Generally, I'll be letting you set the parameters of our discussion. But I'll get the conversation started with what's on the top of my head right now. It has to do with Sustainable Youth Workers (one of the keys to Sustainable Youth Ministries). And I'm realizing that most folks doing youth ministry are not great with boundaries on their time. So I'm trying to think a little more deeply about Sabbath. I think we need a change of thinking:

1) From Hours to Rhythm: The 4th commandment says nothing about how many hours are appropriate to work. It simply focuses on the rhythm of a full day of rest for every 6 days of work. 16 hour days will happen, and we shouldn't complain about them. But we need to make sure that we balance those times of intense engagement with times of intense disengagement.

2) From Anti-Busy to Anti-Trivial: There is a cottage industry of lament around busyness in youth ministry. Busyness is a straw man, and fighting it is a battle that won't be done. The key is to make sure that we focus first on our priorities, and battle against doing secondary priorities before we do primary ones.

Those are a few thoughts to get the convo going.

Looking forward to a great week with you.

Welcome to the Sustainable Youth Ministry forum!

Kara Faris — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:50:28 GMT

Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Youth Ministry forum moderated by Mark DeVries. This forum serves as a continuation of the conversation that was started on November 19 and 20 in Brownsburg and Woodburn. This is the place to ask Mark questions about his workshop and youth ministry or ask the Center for Congregations your questions about youth ministry on congregational resources. Mark will be moderating this forum December 1 - 5, 2008.

Not sure who is listening but here is some data for thought

sthumma — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:00:04 GMT

Earlier I said I would post some attendee data from the studies that are underway currently. So here it is, but please remember this is incomplete and meant for this discussion only.

One question we asked megachurch attendees was had their participation changed in the past two years. 38% of attendees said it had increased while only 8% said it decreased.
Compare this to the Parish Inventory findings we have gathered from mostly mainline churches - much smaller and usually not growing.... data found at http://hirr.hartsem.edu/leadership/total.pdf
on average for the 84 churches 30% of attendees had increased their involvement while 24% had decreased their interactions with the church.
What would your attendees say about their participation?

Another fascinating finding is that of the roughly 20,000 attendees from the 9 churches so far - 12% say they consider the church their "church home" and they also attend other churches at the same time! An equal number (12%) were attending the megachurches but do not consider them their church home. This really contradicts our I think implicit assumptions about belonging to one church and being a faithful member of that one church until we move our membership... think of the potential confusion when a researcher asks someone - where do you attend? and where are you a member?

One of the best predictors of church growth - as I said in the workshop - was how involved the church's attendees were in inviting people to church. In the megachurch data only 13% of attendees didn't invite anyone in the past year whereas in the Parish Inventory data 45% of folks didn't invite anyone to church. For the mega attenders 60% invited 4 or more people in the last year but just 10% of the Inventory churches invited that many.

Finally, for now, I asked Do you agree or disagree with the statement "I have a strong sense of belonging to this congregation."

For the Inventory churches the results were:
Strongly                                               Strongly
Agree           Agree         Disagree        Disagree
41                  44               12                     3

and for the megachurch attendees:
Strongly                                               Strongly
Agree           Agree         Disagree        Disagree
41                  46                 9                     4

Surprised? Clearly the new megachurch attender data - once it is all complete - will give me many things to think about. I expect it to challenge much of what I think is going on at megachurches but also reinforce the point that there are great things happening at all sizes of churches.

I'm still lingering if anyone has questions and will continue to check in throughout the weekend.

Scott

Data from the new megachurch studies I'm doing

sthumma — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:53:36 GMT

Took a while because I had two teens graduate from 8th grade this evening - I'm glad to be done with middle school!

Anyway the celebration is over and here are some VERY preliminary findings from some of the research I'm doing this year. By the way, this is all to remain inhouse (not for distribution) since we are not done with the studies yet so the data is incomplete.

First the national study of megachurches - we haven't gotten much of it in yet - about 200 of what we hope will be 500 or so but there are some interesting changes when compared to the 2005 survey of megachurches we did.

I'll do this like a Q&A --- of the 200+ megachurches so far, can you guess the % that: (answers below)

A. Are led by clergy couples?

B. Report having "no problem recruiting volunteer leaders"?

C. Use a multiple-venue worship service format?

D. Say the label "evangelical" is the closest description among 8 choices offered?

E. Say small groups are "central to our strategy of Christian nurture and spiritual formation"?

F. Broke the 2,000 attendance barrier under their current senior pastor?

G. Have a radio ministry?

H. Have a television ministry?

I. Report "no conflict in the last two years"?

J. Planted a new church in the last 5 years?

K. State that if an active participant in their church stopped attending, the person would be contacted to find out why?

L. Finally, engage in the political activities of distributing voter guides and encouraging people to register to vote?

Answer key:

A. 12% are led by clergy couples

B. 19% have no problem recruiting volunteer leaders

C. 35% use a multiple-site worship service format (up from 27% in 2005, and 22% in 2000)

D. 64% call themselves evangelical, in 2005 only 56% and 48% did so in 2000.

E. 87% say small groups are central (up from 50% in 2000)

F. 80% broke the 2,000 attendance barrier under their current senior pastor

G. 17% have a radio ministry - twice as many did in 2000.

H. 16% have a television ministry - also about twice as many did in 2000.

I. 47% reported no conflict in last two years

J. 55% planted a new church in the last 5 years (up from 37% in 2005)

K. 20% said "definitely yes" for contacting active participants who stop attending

L. 25% engage in distributing voter guides, and 23% encourage people to register to vote

Remember this is all preliminary - and may just be due to the sample we got - I haven't tried to weight the data to correct the sample bias yet.

links to the powerpoints from the workshop

sthumma — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:14:46 GMT

Hi there, as promised you will soon find links to the two powerpoints from the workshop at the following page on the Hartford Institute web site.

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/megachurches_articles.html

Missions

rycobb — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:43:13 GMT

Hi Dr. Thumma,

During your talk, you mentioned that you saw in a recent study that megachurches were invovled in a variety of misisons work. Has that study been published?

rjc

Hello and welcome to the MEGA forum

sthumma — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:15:02 GMT

Hello everyone, I want to invite you to follow up on our excellent conversations from the recent workshop about megachurches and what churches of all sizes can learn from them. I really enjoyed the discussions and Q&A we had at the workshop - many of your comments have continued to stimulate my thinking.

Additionally after the workshop I had the pleasure to spend 4 days studying one of the churches in our workshop - Eastern Star Church. That was a great experience. The church is growing and trying many new things, some of which I talked about in the workshop such as multiple site locations.

Since we were together, I also traveled to San Diego to spend 5 days with The Rock Church. This is another very innovative and very rapidly growing congregation. They began with 3300 persons attending their first service and now after 8 years have over 10,000 in attendance.

My visit to San Diego had far better weather than Indy's tornados - and I do hope that all you have survived intact from the storms and flooding that week.

I realized that I didn't make my powerpoint from the workshop available so I've attached it here along with the worksheet that I had on the screen toward the end of the presentation. I'll say more about that worksheet in a later posting..... Alright, I can't figure out how to attach something to this email so I'll have to post it on the web and give you a url later. sorry.

I'll be in and out on the forum throughout the week and am happy to talk about anything you want to discuss. Also later in the week I'll want to get your thoughts on what I should include in my lectures next week for a course on "growing healthy congregations."

So, lets chat away....

Welcome

Aaron Spiegel — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:48:13 GMT

This forum is a follow up to Scott Thumma's May 30th workshop on Megachurches. Scott will be available to answer your questions and comments through June 20. Thank you!

Tech Company may be valuable for future.

Lisa Miner — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:44:47 GMT

I wanted to give you a heads up for when you come to Evansville. My son in law works for Kemper Technology Consulting, a very reputable company. Aaron had mentioned at the seminar that I attended that they would be looking for good companies here.

When I mentioned it to Aaron he said to make sure you called when you were in town and you could get together. Hope this helps.

Lisa Miner, Central UMC

Aaron Henson, CNA

111 S. E. Third Street

Evansville, IN 47701

Phone: 812-421-8000

E-mail: ahenson@kcpag.com

kempertc.com

Tech Talk Powerpoint Presentation

Aaron Spiegel — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:21:59 GMT

As requested, here's a .pdf version of the Powerpoint Presentation

Copier - Lease versus purchase

Stan Piercefield — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:25:19 GMT

We have been leasing a Xerox Document Center 535 and will soon be ending the lease in October of this year. Naturally, Xerox has already contacted us about upgrading/renewing. Your comments about lease versus purchase were interesting and I wondered what your thoughts might be in this area. Over the lease period, we've paid $460/month (60 months) which is a healthy amount, but affordable. It's been a good machine, rarely needs service, etc. We use it heavily, however we hardly ever go over our allotment on copies. We probably average around 7,000 copies a month. In addition to regular copying, a staff of 8 people use it as their primary printer via our network.

Thanks very much.

Stan Piercefield, Hoosier Harvest Church, Martinsville, IN

web site improvements

Tammi Dant — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:14:25 GMT

I was wondering if you could give some examples of really great church websites. And would you mind taking a look at ours and giving an honest opinion.

Our church situation may be typical...being Catholic, this Methodist world is a bit foreign. We used to have a larger congregation (450-500) and due to conflict in the church, attendance now runs 65-75 on Sundays. The congregation is mainly 65 yrs +. We have 2 part-time ministers, neither of which is available during the week due to their "real jobs". They hadn't had a secretary in 2 years when I started in January, so now that I have the office in order I thought I might focus on the website.

I really enjoyed the workshop in Evansville and look forward to attending another one in the future.

Our website is epworthalive.org.

Thank you,

Tammi Dant

dell desk top

Lisa Miner — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:08:29 GMT

First I would like to say how much I enjoyed your visit to Evansville last Wednesday. I received a lot of good info.

The next day at work I was sharing several things that I learned. My coworker has a computer that is 6 years old. He is having trouble with his email currently and for the first time we have paid for someone to look at it and not use a volunteer. It is still not fixed. I told him of the business grade computer I learned about from Dell. When I went to the web site and put in business grade desk top they had a choice of two and at a considerably higher price than what I expected.

From your experience are they typically around $1000? Do I call and have them build us one?

Does he really need to replace his if he only uses it 16 hours a week and it is doing the job? He does do accounts payable with Quick Books and payroll. He really hasn't had any big problems with it.

I also would like to ask how Norton Anti Virus is related to Symantec. I have had to deal with Norton but it was all through Symantec. What is your opinion of the Norton Anti Virus? I am not impressed.

Thanks for your help and I am going to encourage the church to implement a Technology Team. It is very needed.

Lisa Miner

Central United Methodist Church Secretary

Welcome!

Aaron Spiegel — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:24:37 GMT

Welcome to the Tech Talk forum! This forum is primarily for attendees of the March 5 and 6 workshops in Evansville and Scottsburg. Nancy and I will monitor this forum at least until the end of March for quesitons and comments that weren't addressed at the workshops. Thanks!

Conflict MInistry Help is On the Way

George Bullard — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:33:24 GMT

Amazon has now posted my forthcoming book, Every Congregation Needs a Little Conflict. It is scheduled for release in June. Click here to view book.

Every Congregation Needs a Little Conflict

The premise of this book is that every congregation has conflict. In fact, every congregation needs a little conflict to give it the opportunity to learn how to address conflict in healthy ways. Doing so allows congregations to develop the capacity to deal with inevitable conflict situations. It also allows them to prepare themselves to possibly handle really big conflict without it becoming overly destructive.

Preorder the book now and you will receive an extra 5% off the purchase price, and a guarantee that if the price goes down before it is released that you will benefit from additional price savings. At the time of this post the book was available for $13.59 plus the additional 5% saving for preordering. What a deal!

While you are waiting for the full book to come out, an overview is already posted as an Amazon Shorts and is available for download at $0.49.

Every Congregation Needs a Little Conflict, an Amazon Shorts digital publication.

In future months you will see information on conflict ministry training that will be available. Stay tuned.