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Transformational Ministry

Telling Your Church’s Story — the Real Story

During a recent panel discussion, a reporter explained the process of ferreting out the news. She described the many story pitches that come to her every week from enthusiastic, community-minded groups that are doing “worthy” things — but not “newsworthy” things.

Your walk for charity is not “news.” Lots of people are doing this — every weekend.

She went on to say that when an interested party calls, she begins to engage the caller in conversation about the upcoming event. The caller, with great passion begins to talk about the people, and suddenly, the reporter senses there is something newsworthy in telling the story about the people involved — not the event itself.

Church communicators can learn from this. Our story is often best told through our people. When we tell our church story we should focus on our people and their faith stories. If church makes a difference in their lives, it may make a difference in someone else’s life. You don’t have to use names (although it’s nice when you can). Tell the story of your people on their faith journey and you will be teaching the Gospel.

Facebook is a good place to tell the people side of your story.

One Maryland church applauded a 12-year-old member who made and served the congregation lunch after church one Sunday. It’s Facebook page encourages the readers to press the “Like” button on the story to show the young man how much his work is appreciated. (It’s in the scroll bar on the left of the linked page.) Just that one short note on their web page tells any reader that their church values and encourages the contributions of their young people. It is likely to be far more effective than any newsletter or bulletin kudo.

You can use the same technique in focusing on your members’ faith stories.

Tell your story . . and make it personal!

“I love to tell the story, for those who know it best,
seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.”

23 Apr 2012

9 Common Tactics for Church Growth — Good, Bad and Ugly

The Church has fallen on hard times. This is widely documented — no need to go into detail.

It’s hard to blame the world. The world was here long before the Church. Reaching the world has always been the challenge, yet we remain surprised that the world is not lining up at our doors, wallets in hand.

Today, however, after some mid-century prosperity, we’ve forgotten that the Church’s mission is to reach out. It is not the world’s job to embrace the Church. It’s our job to embrace the world.

We typically greet the challenge with a number of tactics. Some show initial success and then fade. Some are the foundations of long-term ministry. Some are a mixture of frequently used bad ideas. All the ideas below represent actual ministry tactics — for better or worse.

  1. We can pretend to be someone else.
    We can figure what the community wants and pretend to be the answer. You might gain some currency in your community but it is most likely temporary. Community interests change and will probably change just as you are getting the hang of yesterday’s priority. In chasing public demand, we often forget who we are and what we are about. We start to look for best ways to meet demands and that often means abandoning our mission. Religious social services, which routinely deny their connections to the Church so as not to jeopardize government subsidies are a prime example. Services are provided. The Church is buried.
  2. You can scale down ministry.
    This is a frequent road traveled by struggling congregations. It never works. When a congregation decides to go “part time” in its ministry, it projects failure. Any part-time solutions should from the beginning be approached as temporary measures. Clergy chosen for part-time ministries must be missionaries. They rarely are.
  3. You can hire more help.
    You want to reach families so you hire a youth minister. You want to tend to the elderly and sick so you hire a visitation pastor. Soon you have a budget that is out of control and threatening the congregation’s ability to conduct any ministry at all. This avenue is taken by individual congregations, regional bodies and even national denominations. Hiring someone and creating an additional monetary challenge may make us feel like we are addressing needs. By the time results are measured, the newly created positions are secured by custom whether or not they proved effective.
  4. You can copy the equally challenged.
    Churches are great at copying one another’s ministry ideas. However, they often copy before the results are tested. Result: failure is replicated. Individuality and creativity are lost. The church becomes less meaningful.
  5. We can form alliances to pool resources and diversify our talent pool.
    This idea needs more testing in the church. It is somewhat foreign to church structure which traditionally focuses all energy and resources on one leader and many followers. This worked well for the church when small, homogenous communities were the norm. The world is changing faster than the Church seems to be able to adapt. We need each other now more than ever.
  6. We can employ teamwork.
    This sounds like something churches would embrace but it actually hasn’t worked very well. We are all protective of our own territory in the church. The structure for alliances is fostered in theory but rarely used. Church bodies have congregations, social service agencies, missionary outreach, seminaries, schools and church camps. All are looking to the same membership to provide support, but often the major sources of support — individual congregants or congregations — have very little interaction with arms of the church. Congregations hope that members will remember them in their wills, but you can bet the regional offices, seminaries and social service agencies with funded development offices want a big piece of the same pie. Interaction in the church suffers. Congregations are the financial losers. The others, recipients of occasional windfalls, slowly erode their long-term foundation of support.
  7. We can become predators.
    This is a very real dynamic in today’s church. We don’t help struggling congregations when help is first needed, we wait for years as downward trends continue — and almost all congregation’s are experiencing downward statistics. Our inability to support one another in ministry forces congregations to close. The dice are rolled to divide assets. We need to find ways to help the weakest among us so that we can all be stronger. Survival of the fittest may work in nature, but it is not the foundation of the Gospel.
  8. We can live beyond our means.
    This tendency in the church has created predatory ministries. The terrible lessons are being learned slowly and at significant loss. When those with hierarchical power operate on deficit budgets, they jeopardize the ministries of their supporting congregations. It becomes easy to find fault with them and force them to close in ways that guarantee assets are turned over to them.
  9. We can return to our roots.
    We can study the evangelism techniques used by Christ and the apostles. There are good lessons in the scriptures. Why is it that this is often the last place we turn for help?
20 Apr 2012

What SEPA Synod Can Learn from Redeemer

Today, SEPA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Communications Director Bob Fisher sent a plea to SEPA congregations for interaction on a web site the synod created for congregations to share ministry ideas. The site was launched in November and had an initial outpouring of about 100 submissions. Then it fizzled. Involvment on the web site has been flat ever since.

There is little reason to post a time deadline on a web site like this. But Fisher’s request for submissions asks for responses by April 26 — one week before Synod Assembly. You want good statistics for Synod Assembly!

Meanwhile, during the same period, 2x2virtualchurch.com, sponsored by the SEPA-excommunicated members of Redeemer, has grown to more than 200 visits per week, with more than 80 followers and 30 new visitors daily. We’ve pioneered social media in church work and have been gaining respect around the world for our work — interdenominationally and among churches of every size. Look at  2×2’s statistics for roughly the same period (screen shot taken in midday/midweek for last bar):

The concept of SEPA’s web site is flawed. No one needs to submit ideas for review and verification by a central office any longer. There is nothing stopping any church from posting their successes and ideas on their own website. Synod should be encouraging community between congregations without a middle man. Don’t worry . . there’s plenty of work for communications middle managers.

This site is not likely to create dialog. It is rigid in a medium that operates best with freedom. It allows three categories of questions. It limits responses to 50 words. (Most of the questions had close to 50 words.) The message conveyed to a visitor to this site is that their ideas will be monitored, judged and verified — controlled. This thinking is foreign to internet users who are accustomed to the free flow of ideas on Facebook, Twitter and blogging platforms—all of which are community-building platforms.

Why invest time posting to a site that might reject you?

There are other ways to achieve sharing. Start developing content that is helpful to congregations so there is a reason to come to the site in the first place. Begin linking and commenting and taking part in the dialog. Recognize that there are no boundaries to good ideas. Why limit the submission of ideas to just 160 congregations when there is a world of mission out there? It’s the social media way. And it works.

Redeemer would submit its ministry ideas to www.godisdoingsomethingnew.com, but we doubt our ministry would be recognized. It hasn’t been for a long time!

No problem. We post our ideas daily on 2×2. Welcome!

(2×2 be glad to help any church get started in social media. Just contact us! We can have a web site up and running for you in a week, train members to use it and even help you develop content.)

19 Apr 2012

Redeemer’s 2×2 Website Surpasses 5000 Visitors

Redeemer’s experimental congregational web site just tallied its 5000th first-time visitor.

Little Redeemer reaches more people every week than most large churches reach on Sunday morning.

Redeemer started 2x2virtualchurch.com in late February 2011.

The site was started as a mission vehicle when  Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America seized our property.

Redeemer knows that small churches are capable of big ministry. The internet seemed to be a perfect vehicle for a congregation with no church building.

By the end of summer 2011, 2×2 had only a few dozen visits. We were posting sporadically — a few times a month.

We began posting daily.

We focused on three strengths of the congregation: Social Media, Children in Worship and Multicultural Ministry. The site also includes commentary on issues facing many neighborhood congregations today.

We learned to create content with others in mind.

We write interdenominationally, but we don’t hide our Lutheran roots.

We link to other related sites and engage in conversation in other religious forums—all things encouraged in this new communications medium.

Statistics guide our content development.

At Easter we posted a short play, written and produced by Redeemer a year before our doors were locked. It was downloaded 150 times. We responded to this interest by posting a Pentecost resource for small churches.

Much of our traffic comes from our ongoing exploration of Social Media topics.

Our Multicultural series did not attract as much attention, but it was reblogged — linked from other sites—more often. This tells us that there is intense if not broad interest.

Several seminaries posted articles from our website for discussion. One of our recent posts was broadcast by a retweeting engine.

We now have more than 80 followers who subscribe daily via Facebook, Twitter or direct email feed. An additional 30-80 visitors per day represent every state in the Union and more than 70 countries with just shy of 1000 visitors a month. As that number continues to grow, we expect to have between 12,000 and 20,000 readers by the end of our second year.

Our highest international traffic comes from Canada, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, South Africa, and Australia. Traffic is growing in the mid-East and Africa.

There are interesting, inexplicable spikes in readership. One day we had 26 readers in the Bahamas! The very next day we had 16 readers from the Netherlands.

We hear regularly from small mission congregations in Pakistan and Kenya and support one another with ministry ideas and prayer.

We are encountering Christians from many denominations — some of them represent very large ministries. We learn of interesting projects and try to help by providing links. A college student in Texas, who has created a ministry recycling VBS materials, gets a few daily visitors from 2×2 links.

Redeemer may be one of the most active and growing congregations in Southeastern Pennsylvania—even if we are shunned by our own denomination. SEPA justifies its actions in East Falls with accusations of lack of mission focus. There is no lack of mission focus at Redeemer. We are just using a very wide-angle lens!

We will be glad to make a presentation to SEPA Synod Assembly on our growing experience in web ministry. Just contact us!

Redeemer is not closed;
 we are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.

photo credit: Absolute Chaos via photopin cc (retouched)
17 Apr 2012

Seeking Transparency in Church Leadership

This is an election year. We as a nation will elect a president—a decision we must all live with for four years.

It is also an election year in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) Synod of the ELCA. SEPA will elect a bishop for a six-year term and congregations will live with that choice for more than half a decade.

We will take less time preparing for this choice.

The Church has a history of cloistering leaders. Clergy may know one another. Most lay leaders have little knowledge of the names presented to them on the floor of Synod Assembly.

People, today, want to know who their leaders are and what they stand for. We want to know this every day, not just at election time. There was a time when this was difficult. Communication was expensive and unwieldy. This is no longer an excuse. Church leadership can and should interact with church members on a daily basis. This should be a joy not a drudge.

There are long traditions of leadership by intimidation and fear in the Church. It didn’t start out that way, but it goes back centuries. The Reformation tried to address this but even today this leadership style rears its head in defiance of the Christ’s message of love.

In the business world, people have a choice. They can work for a company or they can leave.

It’s a bit different in the Church. People want to stick with their faith and their congregational community. It’s all wrapped up in their relationship with God, their understanding of who they are, and their personal and family faith journeys. When dissatisfied, they aren’t likely to look for a new Church as a first option.

In other words, they care.

That’s a good thing—a treasure!

As SEPA Synod prepares for its 2012 Annual Assembly, the topic is worth consideration.

SEPA Synod delegates need to carefully examine the relationship between synod leadership and the congregations—the only reason synods exist.

The relationship between the synod and its impressive list of rostered leaders is more difficult to analyze but just as important. Each question asked below might also be asked by each rostered professional leader.

Perhaps its best to start by examining the relationships between congregations, their elected leaders and synod leadership.

  • Do you know one another? Are you working together — interdependently — as the operating constitutions require? What do you know about the names on the ballot? What do they stand for? What do they know about you?
  • What do your leaders believe?
  • Do your members have a voice? Under Lutheran polity, you are supposed to! It’s a precious Lutheran concept that clergy and laity have equal leadership standing.
  • Do your elected leaders listen to the people they are serving? Is there two-way communication?
  • Is there a plan for reversing strong downward trends—or will that be presented after a six-year decision is made?
  • Are your lay members comfortable with synod leadership? Must all communication go through your pastor? Are your phone calls returned? Are dates for meetings mutually agreed upon? Are they scheduled within a month of request?
  • Is there trust?
  • What is the synod’s vision for moving forward? Is every congregation included in the vision?
  • Does SEPA treat every congregation and its leaders with respect and dignity — as valued members of God’s kingdom? Are elected congregational leaders treated with respect?
  • Is your only interaction with synod when there is a leadership change? When was the last time a bishop visited your congregation just to listen and get to know you?
  • Do you know what your leaders are doing in your name and in the name of God?

The choice of bishop is pivotal to the image of our Church. Let’s do this carefully.

13 Apr 2012

The Power of Negative Thinking

Label a problem “impossible” and you have an excuse for failure.

This temptation faces today’s Church. In many cases, Church leaders have given up on the Church!

“Neighborhood ministry can’t be supported.” Just declare it! That makes it true.

What happens then?

We stop trying. After all, we have given ourselves permission to fail.

The first to be defeated are the clergy. They throw up their hands and devise ways to make it look like they tried. Assign a caretaker pastor here, an interim pastor there, and pray. Christians support one another in failing ministries. Just look at the statistics.

The laity can only wonder what is discussed at ministerium gatherings of “caretaker” pastors whose assignments are to slowly and quietly bring ministry to a close. It must be deflating. Any pastor who walks in with a new idea is likely to have the conversation quickly changed. The idea is to fail as gracefully as possible.

How can you rebuild self-esteem in a Church where these conditions prevail? Hold grand worship services celebrating Church closures (failures).

Lay people who have more invested in their neighborhood ministries keep working, often under the leadership of defeated pastors, who are called with the tacit understanding that they are to keep things going as long as the money can flow.

Lay leadership is puzzled at the attitudes they encounter, but they soldier on, trying to avoid the conflict brewing from exasperation and a conflict in mission that is never defined — so it can’t be handled.

A  defeated attitude spreads like a bad rash. It chafes at the message that is preached from our pulpits. We worship a God of the possible. The Bible is filled cover to cover with accounts of insurmountable obstacles overcome. Some problems are fought with patience, some with trust, and a few with power. The deeper you go in the New Testament, the more faith is relied upon, and thank God for the Book of James, who reminds us that it might take some work.

The Church faces problems today that can be overcome but not if we must first meet all the standards of yesterday’s church. It is time to clear the slate and approach our congregations openly and with the knowledge that with God, all things are possible. If we do not believe that, why bother?

Walk in the shoes of the laity. Would you support a church with no momentum? Would you join a Church that doesn’t believe in its ability to succeed? Would you subscribe to a faith that doesn’t believe its own message?

photo credit: morberg via photopin cc
12 Apr 2012

The Underestimated Value of Small Churches

There isn’t much difference between small churches and large churches and their mission potential. Redeemer’s Ambassadors have visited nearly 50 neighboring churches. We’ve seen small churches with impressive worship. We’ve seen large churches with ordinary worship. We’ve seen volunteer choirs in small congregations perform as well as larger church choirs with paid section leaders. We’ve seen small churches with amazing track records for supporting neighborhood mission. We’ve seen large churches doing similar things. We’ve seen innovative, scalable mission projects in several very small congregations.

Yet large churches have preferential ranking in the minds of denominational hierarchy. That’s because there is one thing larger churches can do better than small churches. They can better support hierarchy.

Hierarchies are expensive and self-perpetuating.

There is rarely talk about reducing hierarchy. This may be precisely what is needed.

Hierarchies are responsible for keeping church professionals employed. They are also supposed to provide services to congregations. Most congregations have little contact with their regional office unless they are calling a pastor.

Clergy rely on the denomination for access to and approval of a call. The regional body becomes their employment agency.

In the corporate world, employment agencies work for either the employer or the job-seeker. In the church, a regional body, acting as employment agency, holds some power over both the job-seekers and the limited pool of employer congregations within their region. They serve two earthly masters and tend to favor the clergy.

When pastors are vying for the most lucrative or beneficial assignments, the regional body as employment agency begins to judge congregations by their ability to meet clergy needs. If a congregation insists on finding a candidate that fits ministry needs, they can be judged as uncooperative—a judgement that could follow them for decades.

Mandated initiatives that make no sense to congregations can result. The regional body might recommend merger or acceptance of an interim pastor for an undesignated time—or they may recommend closure.

Denominational leaders are acting as managers. Looking at the map, it may make perfect management sense to merge two or three congregations within a two-mile radius. The thinking is that if you merge two 150-member churches, you will have one church with 300-members and that’s a magic number for supporting clergy.

It doesn’t work that way. In the church . . .

1 + 1 = One half

Churches are little communities, something like families. They come with their own traditions and social structure. Merging them to save management costs makes about as much sense as merging three or four unrelated families to make utility and grocery bills more reasonable.

You cannot mandate community. Attempts to merge congregations often end up with one even smaller congregation.

There is another side effect. In the corporate world, mergers and management decisions often result in similar products and services replicated in similar ways. The beauty of small congregations is their individuality. Without small churches we will end up with cookie cutter large churches, worshiping in similar ways and providing similar services and mission opportunities.

The loss of neighborhood ministries will be felt far more deeply than any temporary gains of church closures and mergers.

We must make small congregations a priority. We must find ways to help them get over decades of neglect.

10 Apr 2012

Can the Church Be Fixed?

Are our church doors truly open?

Are our church doors truly open?

The Alban Institute’s Roundtable is unusually active this week. The weekly topic laid out all the failings of the mainline church. The resulting dialog was a mild outrage.

“Why are we going over what’s wrong? We know what’s wrong? How can we fix it?” Among the most desperate and honest questions is, “Can it be fixed?”

There is still a disconnect between church leadership and church members which may be at the heart of a general disillusionment with the Church.

Why do people become involved in church?

  • Some are born into church-respecting families.
  • Some seek answers to life’s problems.
  • Some are looking for peace and comfort
  • Some are seeking validation or acceptance.
  • Some are seeking God.

One way or another, many people find something in the church worth making it part of their lives. Something attracted them. It was probably someone humbly modeling the teachings of Christ.

That opens the door. Then what?

Church always asks more of us. It asks us to learn and to grow. It encourages us to take stands on issues. We are asked to influence others.

And then the rules begin. Rules are prompted by leaders who want order and power. This lessens the potential of the Church.

The laity hit a glass ceiling. Take a stand—but follow us.

Laity have a choice. We choose to become involved when our initial needs are met and we can make a difference. We don’t join churches to take on more financial woes. We don’t join to have more authority figures. We want to feel loved. We want to know God.

Part of the gift of the Reformation — a cause for which many gave their lives — was the empowerment of the laity. Grace is freely given. No middle man is needed. That message is clouded today in a Church where any “stand” is accepted only if it is politically correct.

The Church is at its strongest when it fosters courage by example.

There is an old Sunday School hymn, probably long forgotten by most:

Dare to be brave. Dare to be true.
Fight for the right for the Lord is with you.
He knows your trials, when your heart quails.
Call Him to rescue His grace never fails.

The Church often speaks out of both sides of its mouth. Be brave. Do as we say.

One commenter in the Roundtable discussion wrote an impassioned essay on his frustrations on spreading the Gospel. He concluded with his own battle cry—that he would remain faithful in knowing God.

He is correct. That is the foundation of all that is good and can be better in the Church. It is fundamental. Work at knowing God and the message we send will ring loud and clear. Then we will know when to follow and when to lead. We will be empowered to do both.

photo credit: Autumnsonata via photopin cc
05 Apr 2012

As SEPA Synod Assembly 2012 approaches . . .

“Why don’t ‘you people’ just find another church and stop all the anger?” a pastor asked one of our ambassadors on a recent visit.

That would make life so easy—if only victims would not fight back when they are bullied.

We assure the people of SEPA that Redeemer does not like being angry. Sometimes anger is appropriate.

Jesus became angry at the sight of the moneylenders defiling the Temple. For the last four years, Redeemer has watched those with financial interests in our property behave in similarly greedy and self-serving ways in our sacred space.

Anger is not fun. The alternative — to ignore anger—is to deny our sense of worth, our passion, our community…and not least…our faith. SEPA demands we mothball our memories and our heritage and that we break our friendships and connections with the community where we still live. We are expected to hide our light under a bushel and become passive pew-warming Christians in some other place than our own community.

SEPA discredits the volunteer hours that went into making Redeemer grow in the last ten years. Our documented successes go unrecognized; they collide with SEPA’s prejudice and true goals — acquisition of our assets.

The resulting conflict was needless. Despite reports to the contrary, there was NO forum for mutual discernment, NO long period of working together, NO consideration for the elected leaders of Redeemer.

There WAS ample abuse of the constitutional processes.

Lawsuits could have been avoided. Financial challenges could have been minimized. There were numerous paths to peace. SEPA leadership chose aggression at every turn.

In another synod, a congregation much smaller than Redeemer appealed a similar synodical decision to close. Their story is much like Redeemer’s, complete with a locksmith raid. But comparisons end there. Their Synod Assembly supported the congregation. This congregation is still small but has started community outreach that is funding their church well. They have been helping Redeemer.

Redeemer, easily five times the size of this church, had similar plans which by now would have been quite lucrative and supporting an exciting ministry in East Falls.

Instead Bishop Burkat continues to create a widening wake of hurt, anger and destruction.

Lutheran constitutions and government depend on the understanding that laity and clergy are equals and the organizations within the church are interdependent. Lutherans are supposed to work together.

This cannot happen as long as SEPA Lutherans stand on the sidelines and watch in silence as member churches endure abuse.

Back to the pastor who advised us to just stop being angry.

Why don’t we just find another church?

Our answer. We’ve been vagabond Lutherans for nearly three years. We’ve reached out to 43 of SEPA’s 160 congregations. We’ve visited. We’ve left contact information. We’ve written letters. We’ve made some friends along the way, but the fact is . . . none of the congregations still within the ELCA have reached out to us. No active pastor has visited our members to offer any kind of pastoral care. (Two retired pastors have helped.)

SEPA, the conflict is in your hands. You could turn this around at May’s Synod Assembly by demanding your leadership work to reconcile with the Lutherans of East Falls.

We repeat a wonderful quote all congregations should take to heart.

People should not have to find a church.
The church should find them.

03 Apr 2012

Stop Blaming Congregations for Failure

Let Social Media Save the Day

We lay people have been taking it on the chin for years.

  • We’ve been ridiculed. We don’t tithe. We don’t evangelize. We aren’t welcoming. We don’t volunteer.
  • We’ve been labeled. If we aren’t strong, we are backward and resistant to change, and dying. If we are strong, insisting on answers, we are adversarial and resistant to authority.
  • We are made to feel inferior and inadequate, unable to find our way in the world without hanging onto the robes of the clergy.

—all because mainline churches are failing.

IT’S NOT OUR FAULT.

  • It’s not our fault that the church is structured to nurture homogenous cultures of yesteryear that  naturally replenish and grow in numbers from generation to generation.
  • It’s not our fault that, in the New World, community demographics shift every decade
  • It’s not our fault that even the least dysfunctional families experience their own diasporas every generation or so.
  • It’s not our fault that fewer people enter the ministry as a life call and see the only road to advancement as moving to suburban settings, making neighborhood ministries less desirable.
  • It’s not our fault that leadership has been just as unprepared for changes in society as we were.
  • It’s not our fault that the Church, despite a strong start in the Reformation, managed to sit out the Renaissance and stayed mired in the Middle Ages for the last 500 years.

Now that we are in a new age yet to be named (the Information Age?, the Digital Age? the Age of Globalization?) we’re all playing catch up.

In the hierarchical past, this meant creating a position headed by a well-paid think tank leader with an alphabet of credentials after his name. It meant funding an office with a staff, providing an adequate budget for developing resources, allowing three to five years for development, and the creation of a network to implement resulting initiatives. Implementation would be easy because all churches would be alike, waiting for answers to their problems to be delivered to them. After all, there would be nowhere else for them to turn.

Today, we are standing at the door of the future. The answers will come by inspiring community. There will be much less need for a centralized office of any sort.

The church of the future will be led by a conductor who stands at the podium, signals the opening downbeat and walks away, allowing the musicians to get their cues from one another, to take off in an imaginative riff, to return to the group to enjoy another artist’s take.

Welcome to the Information Age, the Age of Social Media, the Age of Globalization. It’s all coming together just in time to save the mainline church . . . if the mainline church is paying attention.

There is a lot of rethinking that needs to be done. Lay people might be best equipped to lead the way!

photo credit: DeusXFlorida via photopin cc
02 Apr 2012