Thoughts on the current state of the COGOP

[dawgs10]

good read. i left a response.

[stevenson]

Great post!

[EagerBeaver]

Thanks guys, I will respond to your points on my site when I get back from work!

[Dr. Ron]

Bev,

There certainly are some "common denominator " things that all churches should and could do well. I am not so concerned with "excellence" as I am effort, but , I think we have to evaluate the strengths of the local congregation and then set our "purpose" to work within those strengths.

Example: We are a very strong musical church. We have 3 drummers, 4 bass players, 4 guitarists, 5 keyboard players, and on and on.....some extremely excellent voices. We would be foolish to not focus on a strong musical program and emphasize the P&W....which we do....and it is going to a new level soon.

We have a strong counseling group....I have trained over 50 of my own church people in counseling...some now have their own practices.....and
I have trained another 100 for other churches. We work on doing Celebrate Recovery....and are becoming known as the "go to " people in our community for those issues.

While the church should not be built on the personality of the pastor, his leadership should be the guiding force. "Sheep Led" churches never grow to any great degree because it is an unscriptural paradigm.

Each church has to find it's unique purpose in it's community. That is why it is difficult for a denomination to impose it's vision over the vision of the local church and see any real growth.

Pastor Gary is unique in his area. Before he came to Kanioi (sp) that church had existed for decades. His visionary work has caused something that once just did what it was told from someone thousands of miles away, to become something revelant to the community it serves....and keeps it's "affiliation". But it looks nothing like the status quo.

In all the years of Voice of Salvation radion program, it did not in any way resemble what the average COGOP looked like. It was more of an example of what one church in the organization looked like....
Was that bad? Not necessarily.....although most of us thought so at the time.

Sorry for the long post but you threw a soft ball.

Until pastors are trained to find the will of God and purpose of God for the existance of their local churches, they will continue to fall short of what they could be. This is not an easy transition for those who are more interested in building the denom...than in building the local church.

[EagerBeaver]

Excellent points Dr. Ron, and I threw you a softball on purpose on that one.